BV 

boo 

!9£Q 




Basil Mathews 
a Harrv Bisseker 



REFACE BY 



Bishop Brent 




Class SA/_4: 

Book «M& 3 



copyright deposit. 



Christian Fellowship in Thought 
and Prayer 



Christian Fellowship in 
Thought and Prayer 



BY 



BASIL MATHEWS, M.A. 

AND 

HARRY BISSEKER, M.A. 



Introduction by the 
Rt. Rev. Charles A. Brant, D.D. 

Bishop of Western New York 



New York : 

EDWIN S. GORHAM, Publisher 

11 West 45th Street 

1920 






Copyrighted 1920 

BY 

Edwin S. Gorham 



©OI.A570476 
M 28 620 



v > < i 



Contents 

PAGE 

Introduction . . . 7 

Preface 9 

I. — Fellowship . . . . . . .13 

II. — Fellowship in Thought and Prayer . 30 
III. — The Test of Experience . . 70 

IV. — Fellowship in Action .... 87 



Introduction 

By the Rt. Rev. C. H. Brent, D.D. 

This book on Fellowship is of such high value 
that I trust it will be widely read by clergy and 
laity. It is not a book which can be mastered at a 
single reading; it demands study. It is as fine a bit 
of practical mysticism as has come to my attention 
for some years. The fellowship which it advocates 
is not of an easy-going sort. It requires a hallow- 
ing of the whole nature. The beauty of it is that 
there is no mission however humble, no parish how- 
ever struggling that cannot find in this beautifully 
Christian program new inspiration and power. 
These are days for promoting and developing uni- 
ties. This little book is an aid to that end. 

There is just one feature of fellowship not dwelt 
upon in the book to which in conclusion I should 
like to allude. The fellowship I refer to is that 

(7) 



8 Introduction 

which the Church of to-day finds with the centuries 
that have closed and with the invisible company that 
surrounds God in the heavenly life to-day. We call 
it the Communion of Saints. It is not adequately 
presented to people. Were that definiteness of doc- 
trine regarding the other world put before our peo- 
ple there would be less wandering into the bog of 
spiritism than there is. Outside of the inspiration 
that comes from our immediate relation with God 
Himself in Jesus Christ, there is no more wonderful 
support than may be gained from relationship to the 
saints of the past, the heavenly Jerusalem, the 
myriads of angels and the spirits of just men made 
perfect. 

C. H. Brent, 
Feb. 9, 1920. Bishop of Western New York. 



Pref, 



ace 



There is one problem which reasserts itself in 
every age — that of the Church's comparative im- 
potence in face of the immensity of her undertaking. 
In no generation, perhaps, has this problem been 
more acutely felt than to-day. On the one hand, 
the opportunities confronting the Church appear to 
be so fleeting, and of such immeasurable strategic 
importance, and, on the other hand, the limitations 
by which she is beset are at once so numerous and 
so baffling in their character, that some who have 
long believed in her mission have at last begun to 
waver in their loyalty. 

It is a notable fact that the hour which has thus 
brought doubt and perplexity to many has for 
others witnessed the dawn of a new hope. In dif- 
ferent parts of the world thousands of men and 
women, chiefly to be found among the rising gen- 
eration, have gained a fresh and exultant confidence 

(9) 



io Preface 

in God and in the abiding reality of His guidance. 
This deepening of their faith has come to them as 
they have practised a special mode of approach to 
Him — the path of fellowship in thought and prayer. 
The principles on which this method is based are as 
old as Christianity itself, but it would probably be 
true to say that in the particular application which 
they have now received they have been invested with 
a new and a larger significance. 

The present little volume seeks to expound both 
the method itself and the principles on which it 
rests. It has been written in the first place to meet 
an immediate need. Among those who have learnt 
to value the method there is a widespread desire to 
possess a considered statement of the vital truths 
which it embodies — partly, that it may be available 
for their own further consideration and use, and 
partly that friends who are about to join a Fellow- 
ship-group for the first time may be invited to read 
it beforehand in preparation for the gatherings in 
which they are to engage. Such a statement, at 
the request of others, the writers have here at- 
tempted to furnish. To this original motive for 
their task they have ventured to aad a second — the 
hope that a description of the mode of fellowship 



Preface 1 1 

concerned may bring it to the notice of some to 
whom it might otherwise remain unknown. There 
is no group of Christian people — whether a Church, 
a Sunday School, or any other type of religious 
society — by whom its principles could not be 
adopted and applied. And there is none, we are 
bold enough to suggest, to whom it does not offer 
the hope of a new inspiration and a new progress. 
As some descriptive term is a necessity, we have 
referred to the practice of corporate thought and 
prayer as a "method." The repeated use of such a 
term, however, inevitable as it appears in these 
pages, renders us liable to one misunderstanding 
against which we desire to guard ourselves at the 
outset. It is in no sense our intention to imply that 
any "method" contains within itself the way to re- 
ligious revival. The way to revival, considered 
from the human side, must always be that of fidelity 
to inward, spiritual principles. We have only one 
reason, as we claim only one justification, for at- 
taching emphasis to this particular method. It has 
proved in experience its peculiar power to foster 
the fidelity in question and to provide, for those who 
seek to practise it, a singularly favourable sphere 
for its exercise. 



12 Preface 

In the preparation of this volume we have re- 
ceived help of special value from the Rev. Canon 
E. W. Barnes, D.Sc, F.R.S., Master of the Temple, 
and from the Rev. Will Reason, M.A., though 
neither of these gentlemen is to be regarded as 
responsible for any of its detailed statements. 
For their generous encouragement and assistance 
we offer them our sincere gratitude. 

B. M. 

H. B. 



Chapter One : Fellowship 

"The lack of Fellowship is hell." 

— William Morris. 

I 

FELLOWSHIP, like all elemental things, defies 
definition. Its subtle and powerful essence es- 
capes through the closest mesh of words. Those 
who have in any full sense shared intimate fellow- 
ship will feel a disappointing inadequacy at any 
attempt to express its reality. The power of fellow- 
ship in life, its transforming influence in personality, 
and its revolutionary moral power can never be 
conveyed by any form of words to those who have 
not shared it. 

At root, fellowship is a living intercourse between 
personalities. It is such an intercourse charged 
through and through with both freedom and love, 
and kept active by a common aim. Love is at once 
the tether of the comradeship and the stimulus of its 
corporate life in pursuit of the quest. Freedom is 
the "wind on the heath" of fellowship, keeping the 
affection of the Round Table from becoming stale 
or stagnant or oppressive. 

Fellowship, then, is an active comradeship be- 
tween personalities, men or women or both, who 

(13) 



14 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

unite with one another in a common worship, or 
battle for a common quest, or play their game for 
the honour of a team, or pool their separate thoughts 
in constructing and carrying into effect a single plan, 
or who simply share the needs and desires of a com- 
mon humanity. "These are the ties which, though 
light as air, are as strong as links of iron."* 

At its highest expression fellowship comes to men 
and women the tethers of whose love for one an- 
other enlarge rather than shackle the freedom of 
their minds, and whose common confidence in and 
loyalty to one another give to each the power of the 
"backing" of all, and to all the collected stimulus 
and invention of each. Fellowship, in short, is all 
that divine and human commerce between souls 
which makes a number of separate men into a living 
group. In fellowship they pull together like a team 
tugging the w r agon of life forward. They move 
together like a boat's crew swinging as one man in 
a disciplined unity of will to win their race. A 
group in real fellowship has, in fact, many of the 
qualities of a personality. Through the power of 
fellowship separate personalities blend in a society 



* Burke. Speech on moving his Resolutions for Conciliation 
with the Colonies, 1775. 



Fellowship 15 

of friends that has an identity, a characteristic 
quality, and a power of concerted action that in- 
crease the potentialities of each individual. 

Fellowship in this large sense has all the richness 
and breadth of the almost untranslatable Greek word 
KowAa. Under the power of such fellowship all 
that each man owns becomes literally "common 
wealth" ; they have in fact "all things in common" — 
not merely goods and chattels and food, but ideas 
and ambitions, projects and crusades. 

The story of man is full of the revolutions in 
human conditions made by the power of such fel- 
lowship exercised in groups of men. Such groups 
have often centred in the attractive and compelling 
power of some personality dedicated to an idea. 
Yet that personality itself is the creation as often as 
it is the creator of fellowship. In fact, fellowship 
rarely takes permanent form unless the compelling 
force that draws the men together is greater than 
any human personality. The cohesive power is nor- 
mally exercised by loyalty to an idea or co-operation 
in a steadily pursued plan or a common worship. 

Great movements in the world's history, associ- 
ated as they are in the popular conception with the 
leadership of some powerful personality, can gen- 



1 6 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

erally be traced in origin to the seed plot of some 
group of men whose fellowship in thought and 
often in prayer has itself been the nursery of that 
man's power of great leadership. John Woolman 
moving in his circle in America, and Wilberforce 
with his friends in England, debated and developed 
those germinal ideas which destroyed on the battle- 
fields of America and in the Parliament of Britain 
the slavery that was arraigned first at the judgment 
bar of the Christian conscience. John Henry New- 
man, in concert with the flaming souls of Hurrell 
Froude and the others of their group, nursed and 
fanned the sparks that blazed out in the Oxford 
Movement. Mazzini and his comrades proclaimed 
and fought for the twin doctrines of nationality and 
liberty that now begin to govern the world. The 
Gottesfreunde similarly prepared the mind of Teu- 
tonic Europe for the stormy message of Luther. 
The Holy Club meeting in Wesley's room in Lin- 
coln College toughened the fibre and speeded and 
strengthened the indomitable wills than trans- 
formed England. Francis of Assisi with his group 
of Poor Brothers gave Europe such a vision of the 
divine light on earth as she had not seen before nor 
has witnessed since. And above all stands that first 



Fellowship 17 

fellowship which moved through the villages of 
Judaea and by the cornfields and lake side of Galilee 
and then went out to "turn the world upside down.'' 

These examples that leap to the memory illus- 
trate the irresistible power of fellowship working 
in men who are so welded to one another by a com- 
mon loyalty to a great idea that they have one will, 
one faith, and one divine ambition. In them we 
discover that the leader is essentially the voice of 
the fellowship; we realise the truth of Bishop 
Brent's declaration that ''the leader is simply the 
foremost companion." 

In the quickening 'atmosphere of such confident 
and intimate fellowship, where 

Thought leaps out to wed with thought 
Ere thought can wed itself with speech ; 

and where men's separatist rivalries and competing 
ambitions are annealed and welded into a loyal 
common pursuit of a single quest, we discover the 
principle of moral co-operation in redeeming the 
world. 

Nothing, however, is more fatal to fellowship 
than uniformity among those who compose it, or 
complete agreement in their views. 



1 8 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

The fallacy that a group is best when its consists 
of men or women of one type of mind or similarity 
in outlook is perilous. Uniformity of tempera- 
ment or agreement in all opinion makes fellowship 
anaemic and flaccid. Fellowship is at once tested 
and strengthened by the pooling of divergent views 
and and coalescing of varied personalities. The bril- 
liant and glorious strength, the rich, full-blooded 
vitality of the first Christian fellowship, lay in the 
fact that the team of the twelve included such per- 
sonalities as Andrew the gentle but persistent, Peter 
the impetuous but uncertain, the mystical yet ag- 
gressive Sons of Thunder, Thomas the sceptical 
logician and Matthew the dedicated business man. 
Indeed one cause of the anaemia and dulness that 
paralyse much of our modern fellowship lies on 
one side in the fact that we draw in the cautious 
Thomases and shrewd Matthews, but tend to freeze 
out the other types by questioning the good taste 
of the volcanic and explosive Peter (coming in too 
with the smell of fish on his linen !) and by agreeing 
that after all John, amiable dreamer as he is, is "not 
what we should call practical." 

But in reality, that "infinite variety" is the very 
fountain of power in fellowship when it is caught 



Fellowship 19 

up into the vital unity of a common leader and a ' 
single quest. And that diversity in unity finds 
superb power and immortal validity when the loy- 
alty is given to the Son of God and the single quest 
is the campaign for His world kingdom. It is then 
— and only then — that the horizon of the fellowship 
is ultimate and the resources of its power are infi- 
nite. The supreme fellowship is the Christian Fel- V 
lowship. 

If fellowship, then, is rooted in intercourse but 
does not involve either uniformity of type or iden- 
tity of opinion, what normally is the basis on which v/ 
the intercourse proceeds ? As a rule it is rooted and 
grows from a common spiritual experience which 
issues in a common spiritual experience to achieve 
a certain aim. To examine the fellowships that we 
have given as examples, the groups which created 
and carried through the Franciscan Movement, the 
Methodist Revival, the Oxford Movement, the Anti- 
Slavery Campaign, and the Young Italy Campaigns, 
is to discover in them all those qualities of a com- 
mon spiritual experience and quest. In every case 
differences are many and divergence of view is pro- 
nounced; but unity regulates and controls the dif- 
ferences. 



20 Fellozvship in Thought and Prayer 

The glory of the gift of fellowship lies in the fact 
that, while action is based on the discovered and 
experienced unity, thought becomes fullest and most 
fruitful when it audaciously explores the territories 
of difference. To penetrate without flinching 
through these dreaded places of divergence has 
proved again and again, as Livingstone discovered 
when he crossed the reat Desert, that the land 
which men had always declared to be a desert turned 
out to be a whole continent "full of great rivers and 
many trees." In particular, it has been proved most 
richly that to Christian folk who keep their hearts 
quick to the ultimate fact of their unity in Christ it 
is possible to explore to their farthest depths those 
forests of difference which have kept men apart, and 
to discover that, after all, the solution of our diver- 
gences will be reached, not by surrendering our sa- 
cred convictions, but by discovering a higher, richer, 
more glorious and hitherto unsuspected synthesis. 
And the unifying power by which that synthesis is 
reached is always personal fellowship in a real ex- 
perience of Christ. 

In contradiction to the view here held that the 
only ultimate and immortal fellowship is the Chris- 
tian fellowship, it may indeed be argued that in the 



Fellowship 21 

day of crucifixion the fellowship was broken. The 
men who had been bound to one another in Jesus 
fled separately into the darkness. One of the fel- 
lowship left Him at the very communion service of 
fellowship — the common meal — and betrayed Him 
by the very symbol of fellowship — a kiss. Another 
lied with oaths and curses, saying that he had never 
spoken to the Man. 

What seems to be the contradiction of our faith 
in the finality and ultimate power of Christian fel- 
lowship is, in fact, its seal and confirmation. For 
when that cursing denier cried "I go a-fishing," the 
others said "We go with thee" ; and in the dawn 
they found Him and He found them. On that tide- 
less shore they were chained for ever to Him and 
each other by the love that would not let them go. 
They were joined in that immortal Fellowship of 
the Living Lord which has since that day penetrated 
to every shore and of which we ourselves are free. 



II 

The strength of fellowship reposes, then, on the 
fact that to men of limited view and partial capacity 



22 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

immense enrichment at once of personal power and 
of corporate action comes from sharing their 
thought and their prayer in dedication to a common 
aim. But, although the feebleness and relative 
futility of individual men are thus swallowed up in 
the larger powers of corporate thought and action, 
the actual desire for fellowship is not a product of 
the weakness of men; it is rooted in the very being 
and nature of God. "God," as Madame Guyon has 
said, " has an infinite desire to communicate Him- 
self/' Indeed the very heart of the supreme Act of 
God in giving Himself in Christ was His desire to 
reconcile to Himself the estranged faces of men — in 
a word, His aim was fellowship. God lives in fel- 
lowship, for God is Love. 

That picture gallery of the nature of God — the 
parables — is just a series of windows into the heart 
of fellowship. The central idea of the shepherd in 
leaving the ninety and nine for the one is to com- 
plete the fellowship. The distinction between the 
hireling and the Good Shepherd is that the former 
cares nothing and the latter will give everything for 
the fellowship. The climax of the story of the pro- 
digal son is the restoration of fellowship; and the 
damning sin of the otherwise blameless elder brother 



Fellowship 23 

is that he refuses to join in it. The growth of the 
Kingdom is like leaven. The final seal on disciple- 
ship is that the men have climbed from the status of 
a bondslave to the standard of the friend : they have 
entered into fellowship. The whole story of the 
Gospels, indeed, is the record of the training of a 
fellowship that found in the Fatherhood of God the 
supreme authority for and source of the fellowship 
of His sons. 

The experience of the full richness of fellowship 
is, however, far from demanding that men shall al- 
ways dwell in companionship. Fellowship is the con- 
tradiction, not solitude which is the quietness where 
blooms of fellowship are matured into the fruits of 
personality, but of isolation which is the very death- 
chamber of character. A man who isolates his life 
puts it in a refrigerating cell; he sterilizes it; it can 
neither grow nor reproduce its life. But a man who 
leaves his fellows in order to dwell in solitude with 
God is discovering the richest gift that he can 
bear back in his hands to the fellowship. What Paul 
found in the solitude of the desert of Arabia he 
poured out in glorious abundance for thirsty men in 
Antioch and Ephesus, in Athens, Corinth and Rome. 
Christ on the lonely mountain drew on the Infinite 



24 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

Resources for the life of the whole fellowship of 
men. 

Our definition of fellowship as living intercourse, 
however, involves that it can only exist where there 
is reciprocity. To give to men is not to have fellow- 
ship with them. Fellowship of the order that 
bridges all divisions of race and social status and 
sex is not made even by giving the most heroic, per- 
sistent and philanthropic service. We may die for 
men or give royally, yet may fail to create the one 
thing that they are starving for, if we do not give 
ourselves in fellowship; if we do not share as well as 
give. The paradoxes of St. Paul's song of love are 
all based on this fact that to preach or give money 
or even go to the stake are not in themselves fellow- 
ship. "You have given your goods to feed the 
poor," said Bishop Azariah, speaking for the people 
of India and addressing men and women of other 
races who cared supremely for India. "You have 
given your bodies to be burned. We would ask for 
love. Give us friends/' 

This fact that human life is not fed save on such 
fellowship, and that fellowship comes through shar- 
ing and not merely giving, is restated vividly in 
Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Launfal"; where 



Fellowship 25 

Christ, discovered by Sir Launfal in the leper with 
whom the knight has shared bread and water by a 
stream, says : 

The Holy Supper is kept indeed 
In what so we share with another's need. 
Not what we give but what we share 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
Who gives himself with his gift feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me. 

Fellowship, then, is impossible apart from per- 
sonal intercourse on a common footing. We believe 
that there is, when we get down to the bed-rock real- 
ities of life, no common footing to be discovered in 
the fact of being human. The brotherhood of man 
(biologically, anthropologically, ethnologically man) 
simply does not exist either in his history or his 
make-up or his prospects. Inter-class prejudices and 
diversities, international differences and distastes, 
inter-racial antipathies and even loathings make it 
impossible to secure a common footing there. "Ex- 
perience leads me to the conviction/' said Sir 
Sydney Olivier on the basis of experience as Gov- 
ernor of Jamaica, where the problem of the relation- 
ship of white and black is a permanent pre-occupa- 
tion of statesmanship, "that there is no basis for 



26 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

inter- racial relationship save on a spiritual plane." 
That is to say, there is no real basis for real fellow- 
ship on a world scale save on a spiritual plane. Men, 
in a word, are not brothers by birth in the human 
sense; they are brothers by new birth in the super- 
human sense. Their brotherhood finds absolute and 
enduring reality only in a spiritual parentage — in a 
word, in the Fatherhood of the God and Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. That common sonship found 
in sharing the sonship of Jesus Christ does in fact — 
and not in rhetoric — form the one permanent found- 
ation of world-fellowship. 

On the increasing practice of fellowship, in the 
sense of the triumph of unity over discord between 
nations and races, in sober fact the future of that 
world depends. For such fellowship beginning as it 
does between individual men finds a fuller operation 
between groups and organisations, between clans 
and nations and races. The whole story of human 
progress is, in this aspect, the dramatic record of the 
gradual substitution of higher forms of unity for 
division. So inter-tribal fighting and clan war die as 
the unity develops the clans into the nation or the 
tribes in the race. And the crucial issue of our own 
century is simply and centrally whether the principle 



Fellowship 27 

of fellowship embodied in a world-league of nations 
and of races is or is not to supercede that lack of fel- 
lowship which (as William Morris has said) means 
hell, and has meant between nations in our own day 
a hell of inextinguishable anguish. 

We have been forced by the frightful logic of war 
to recognise that the erection of the solitary ambition 
of one empire above the general right of all nations 
is on the international scale the precise equivalent of 
lack of fellowship between individual men; and that 
just that failure in fellowship between nations in- 
volved humanity in the maiming and destruction of 
the flower of its young life and in the intolerable 
agony of war. But that international complex of 
antagonisms, that uneasy balance of armed power 
defending competing interests, is simply the expres- 
sion in the field of international affairs of the inter- 
class antagonisms, the commercial rivalries, the civic 
jealousies, the interdenominational distrusts, and 
the personal bickerings that hold considerable sway 
in the national, ecclesiastical, local and individual 
life. 

The central aim of the new world, then, is the in- 
crease of fellowship. The supreme need of men of . 
all races is that they should share, not formal agree- 



28 Fellozvship in Thought and Prayer 

ments that may be torn up, not superficial delimita- 
tions of influence that simply secure a temporary and 
uneasy peace through separation by railings and 
fences; but a growing fellowship of rich intercourse. 
The ultimate salvation of the world lies in the prac- 
tice of that Christian fellowship which will alone 
bridge inter-racial gulfs and inter-class chasms. 

To that end we need, first, fellowship within the 
Church and between the Churches, for, literally, fel- 
lowship is the life-blood of the Christian Church. It 
is the pulsating arterial flow which sets all the limbs 
of her immortal body tingling with divine vitality 
and vigor, and fits her for the service of man and 
the glory of God. We need fellowship between 
capital and labour, for there alone lies the hope — 
and it is a rich hope — of building up a national life 
in which each class shall give its service for the 
strength and joy of the whole. Superlatively the 
call comes for fellowship between races of all 
colours. For in a world literally made one by the 
miracles of physical science applied to communica- 
tion and transport, and made helpless against those 
miracles of science applied to the slaughter of men, 
there is no alternative to a growing fellowship of 
mutual understanding save a swift and ghastly in- 



Fellowship 29 

crease of inter-racial rivalry in trade ambitions and 
labour jealousies. Such rivalry will precipitate 
humanity over the precipice of universal war into 
the abyss of barbarism, where men will cringe in 
helpless terror and in unavailing remorse amid the 
ruins of a world whose rich heritage might have 
been saved by the practice of fellowship. 

The supreme need of the world, then, is to replace 
the competing rivalries of hate by the generous rival- 
ries of Christian fellowship on every plane of hu- 
man life — individual, commercial, religious, between 
the classes, international, and lastly, but supremely, 
inter-racial. Only so can the world escape, not only 
further degradation and the agony of greater wars, 
but the ultimate ruin of ordered and humane life. 
Beginning in the individual and working upward 
and outward it is essential that comity should re- 
place conflict, that fellowship should rule in every 
sphere of life, and that the irresistible authority of 
an alliance of nations working in moral co-operation 
should plan and erect, assailable yet impregnable, 
the walls of the City of God. 



/ 



Chapter Two : Fellowship 
in Thought and Prayer 

THE preceding chapter has represented fellow- 
ship as at once our goal and our way. If human 
life is to escape the perils which threaten it and 
to attain the ideal for which we believe it to have 
been created, perfect fellowship on earth — that is to 
say, fellowship complete alike in its range and in its 
intensity — is the end at which we must aim. But the 
means to that end will be found in the more limited 
fellowship at present available. It is as we practise 
such fellowship as is already possible to us that we 
shall both discern the path to its wider application 
and be strengthened to achieve its ultimate fulfil- 
ment. 

During recent years this conviction has pro- 
foundly influenced the thought and action of many 
of the most ardent spirits within the Christian 
Church. Deeply impressed by the gravity of the 
world-situation and by the Church's comparative 
failure to furnish guidance and inspiration, they 
have found a new hope in the Christian teaching on 
the potency of fellowship. It was in the practice of 
fellowship that the early Christians, confronted in 
their own generation by the most perplexing prob- 

(30) 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 31 

lems of truth and conduct, obtained the wisdom and 
spiritual reinforcement needful for their solution. 
Persuaded that the same source of light and strength 
is still accessible, groups of men and women have 
been meeting together and facing the present critical 
situation with passionate intensity of thought and 
feeling. In consequence, their entire outlook has 
been transformed. Truths long received in theory 
have acquired a new emphasis and reality, and so 
large and increasing is the influence of the altered 
attitude, among both the younger ministers and the 
younger laymen of nearly all Christian communi- 
ties, that it has begun to assume a real significance 
for those who seek to discern the signs of the times. 

It is now our task to attempt its delineation. The 
endeavour is in one sense foredoomed to failure. 
For the change is pre-eminently a change of spirit, 
and a spirit can rarely be captured and imprisoned in 
cold words : only through actual contact with it can 
its power be adequately realised. What has taken 
place is that men and women have begun to see a 
vision and to experience a passion, and these things 
defy portrayal by means of paper and ink. All that 
is possible, therefore, is a brief description of the 
temper and attitude in which they have resulted, and 



32 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

of the method of fellowship by which they have been 
attained. 



The starting-point is found in a fresh recognition 
— so vivid and powerful as to constitute almost a re- 
discovery — of three of the Church's age-long con- 
victions. 

The first of these is the belief in the Divine suf- 
ficiency. Admittedly, the Church is far too weak of 
herself to satisfy the manifold and bitter need of the 
world. For this, God, and God only, is sufficient. 
But that He is sufficient is not merely a beautiful 
theory : it is a most real and practical fact on which 
we must learn to count with a more simple direct- 
ness. Though we ourselves neither are nor ever can 
be equal to the situation that confronts us, God is 
equal to it. His matchless wisdom is never baffled. 
The situation may well be one which He Himself 
did not design — the creation, not of His purpose, but 
of man's wilful misuse of his freedom. None the 
less on that account, the action for which it calls is 
plainly manifest to Him. So long as God lives no 
position will be hopeless. There can be no problem 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 33 

of human life, however complicated by human 
wrongdoing, of which He does not see the right 
solution. 

Not only does God perceive this solution, but — 
and here is the second conviction — it is also His 
Will to reveal it. The God Whom Jesus made 
known, Who numbers the very hairs of our head 
and without Whose notice not a sparrow falls to the 
ground, does not dwell apart from the world that He 
has made. As the Incarnation has taught us once 
for all, He is to be found in the midst of the world's 
travail and agony, seeking to bring order out of 
chaos and moral life out of moral death. Such a 
God will not leave us to ourselves as we strive to act 
as His allies : He will be ceaselessly waiting to guide 
us. 

At no time, therefore, need we be dependent solely 
upon our own wisdom : there is a higher Wisdom to 
which we have free and constant access. In what- 
ever capacity we may be called upon to act (whether 
as citizens or as members of a church or as private 
individuals), and by whatever circumstances our 
conduct may be conditioned (whether by those or- 
dained of God Himself or by others originated 
through human folly), we can find ourselves in no 



34 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

position in which He is not willing to reveal the path 
He requires us to follow. The New Testament 
promise of guidance, far too prominent in its pages 
ever to be eradicated, implies that through our fel- 
lowship with God in Christ our own thought may be 
corrected and informed by the Divine thought.* In 
so far as this ideal is realised, in all the problems of 
the Kingdom we may count w r ith simple confidence 
upon God's detailed and particular direction. 

This daring assertion leads us naturally to the 
third of the convictions on which the deeper empha- 
sis is being laid. Like all the spiritual gifts of God, 
the guidance thus claimed is spiritually conditioned. 
- We must be ready to receive as well as He to bestow r . 
Indeed, the Divine gift will be proportionate to the 
human receptivity. It is only as our will is progres- 
sively surrendered to His perfect Will that the Di- 
vine direction can be made progressively clear to us. 

On this third conviction it will be necessary for us 
to dwell a little more fully. In the quest for guid- 



* "In this connection I may refer to 1 Corinthians ii. 16, 
'We have the mind of Christ,' which does not merely mean, 
we 'think' as Christ thinks, but 'Christ thinks in us' ; the 
mental processes of the Christian are under the immediate 
inspiration of the spirit of Christ.'' — Johannes Weiss, "Paul 
and Jesus," p. 115. (E. T.) 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 35 

ance the submission of our will to God must mani- 
fest itself at two important points. 

In the first place, we need to be set free from all 
self-assertion in our thinking. Human self-asser- 
tion forms the chief hindrance to the revelation of 
God's Will. It is but too easy unwittingly and unin- 
tentionally to deaden our sensitiveness to His voice 
through prejudice and personal predilections. Not 
unnaturally almost every problem is approached 
with an individual bias of some kind. We are apt to 
hold tenaciously to particular views already formed, 
or to particular methods rendered familiar by cus- 
tom, and in consequence the peril of a bondage to 
our preconceived ideas is never, perhaps, entirely ab- 
sent. There is the risk, again, so long as we are 
human, that our thinking may be influenced by our 
individual wishes. The knowledge that through our 
decision we ourselves or others may be affected in 
position or authority, or that some favourite plan 
may be promoted or frustrated, may readily impel 
our judgment in this direction or in that. All think- 
ing into which such considerations are allowed to en- 
ter implies a merely partial consecration of the will. 
The love of our own preferences and desires — even 
in relation to the Kingdom of God — may prove an 



36 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

effective barrier between our souls and Him. Un- 
less we are prepared, when we profess to seek God's 
guidence, to give up, should He ask it, our own 
strongest wishes and most deeply-rooted prejudices, 
we are imposing conditions upon God : we are set- 
ting Him limits within which to work ; we are say- 
ing, in effect, that we pray Him to lead us provided 
that the leading shall be kept within the bounds of 
our own fixed opinions. It is not in such an attitude 
of mind that men can receive the clear revelation of 
the Divine purpose. For the existence of personal 
bias, it is true, we may not be always or wholly re- 
sponsible, but for readiness to lay it aside at the call 
of God, we most certainly are. The underlying as- 
sumption of all true prayer for God's direction is 
that it is God's thought of the position, and His 
only, that we seek. In every problem that arises, w r e 
can gain the knowledge of God's will only in so far 
as our own minds are laid freely at His disposal. In 
other words, the first condition of guidance is that 
we are willing to be guided. 

In the second place, when God's will has once been 
made plain, we must be ready, with a strong and 
simple faith, to accept courageously whatever situa- 
tion it involves. Our preconceived ideas and hopes 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 37 

are not the only means of setting limits to God's 
guidance; we may restrict Him just as surely by a 
nervous fear of consequences. The acts of God are 
often so drastic in their character that, from our 
cautious human standpoint, we find it hard to under- 
stand them. Sometimes before He builds up He 
breaks down. Sometimes He severs ere He unifies. 
He rejects a chosen nation. He divides a Church. 
He forsakes a long-established method. He aban- 
dons some time-honoured instrument of service. 
Even to His own people, at the hour of crisis, such 
far-reaching changes are apt to bring a blind and 
impotent perplexity. We confess the "accidents" 
with the "essence" of His working. Through long 
experience we have learnt so closely to associate the 
Divine activity with certain forms through which it 
has expressed itself and certain conditions by which 
it has usually been accompanied, that when these 
forms and these conditions are endangered, w r e be- 
gin to fear for the Divine activity itself. The result 
may be, and often is, that an unworthy and mistaken 
dread of what may happen prejudices our mind 
against particular suggestions, thus gravely circum- 
scribing our susceptibility to the Divine guidance. 
The moral is not, of course, that we must be reckless 



38 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

of possible consequences, for there is a wise and al- 
together necessary attention that is due to them. It 
is the more sane and moderate lesson that we should 
not, through fear of them, make ourselves their 
slaves, since there is no less truly a respect for them 
that is both cowardly and altogether dangerous. 
Christian men and women can never safely neglect 
the faith that "ventures." The great type of faith is 
one who went forth "not knowing whither he went.'' 
Such a faith is the second essential condition of 
God's guidance. Just as we must strive to free our 
minds from every preconceived impression so we 
must abandon all unworthy fear. An undue bias 
may be given to our thought by the one no less than 
by the other. There is a price to be paid for clear 
knowledge of God's will, and not seldom that price 
may be the readiness to sacrifice our trusted 
methods, our reliance on particular persons or the 
security promised by some familiar "safeguard." 
We must be willing, with simple faith, to take the 
one step that is plainly right, and go forth with God, 
even though it be, into the darkness of the unknown. 
We now see a part, at least, of what is meant by 
the statement that the Divine guidance is spiritually 
conditioned. All thinking which, by prejudice, self- 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 39 

interest, or fear, asserts the "self over against the 
interests of the Kingdom, thereby and to that extent 
impairs God's power of leading us. For those men 
and women, therefore, who wish to receive the 
clearest revelation of God's mind, the removal of 
every such restriction becomes a simple necessity, 
This is the third fundamental conviction in the 
standpoint we are seeking to elucidate. 

It is from the three convictions thus briefly re- 
viewed that the attitude under consideration ulti- 
mately derives its origin. No one of the three, let us 
hasten to admit, implies any fresh discovery of 
truth. On the contrary, as we have suggested, each 
of them has always formed a part of the Church's 
traditional belief. What is new for the present gen- 
eration is the greater clearness and assurance with 
which they are being apprehended. Truths like 
these, while seldom denied among Christians, tend 
from time to time to become ineffective through be- 
ing relegated to the region of merely theoretical con- 
ceptions. The significant fact in the position we are 
interpreting is that, at least in certain circles, they 
have now been released from that region and are 
once again being widely and confidently accepted as 
a basis for practical action. 



40 Fellozvship in Thought and Prayer 

II 

Granted, then, a God Who is competent to deal 
with every situation that may arise and willing to 
lead all who submit themselves to His direction, in 
what way may His guidance be sought for and ob- 
tained ? To this inquiry the men and women in ques- 
tion return a clear and quite definite reply. 

At the general mode of approach we have already 
indirectly hinted. We have spoken of the emphasis 
laid upon " fellowship with God in Jesus Christ." It 
is through the communion of our spirit with God's 
Spirit, as such a phrase has implied, that we may be 
brought to a surer knowledge of His will. But this 
general method, which is of course the common heri- 
tage of all Christians, receives in the present instance 
a special and very suggestive application. The 
human fellowship with God on which reliance chief- 
ly rests is corporate in character. There is no dis- 
paragement of the intercourse enjoyed by each 
separate soul with God, the necessity for which can 
never be transcended. But it is believed that that 
solitary contact with God does not exhaust the possi- 
bilities of our communion. No one of us lives unto 
himself. We are members one of another, and 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 41 

there is none who can say to his neighbor, "I have no 
need of thee." Hence in our common fellowship w T e 
may experience a mutual enrichment by means of 
which our whole capacity of vision and of recep- 
tivity will be enlarged. "Where two or three are. 
gathered" in the Name a special promise of the 
Presence is assured ; and therefore a group of men 
and women praying or thinking together with unity 
of spirit and purpose may expect to receive a bless- 
ing which is more than the sum total of, and differ- 
ent in quality from, the blessing each would have re- 
ceived through the same amount of individual 
prayer or thought. This revived emphasis upon the 
reality of the Church's corporate life and upon its 
necessity to the complete experience of each member 
is full of significance, and no one should need to be 
reminded that it is simply a return to the New Tes- 
tament point of view. Its practical outcome in the 
solving of the Kingdom's problems is that it yields 
us a clear and definite method in our search for 
God's guidance. We learn to look for His direction 
in a spiritual communion — a communion which is 
fellowship with one another as well as fellowship 
with Him ; or, rather, since there are not two experi- 



42 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

ences but one, a communion which is fellowship with 
one another in Him. 

We have called this a "clear and definite method.' ' 
Since the impression derived from a merely general 
statement may rather be that it is somewhat vague 
and impractical, it may be well to furnish a more de- 
tailed description of the manner in which it is em- 
ployed. A company of men and women meet to- 
gether that they may seek that richer consciousness 
of God, and, with it, that clearer light upon truth or 
conduct, their need of which has been impressed up- 
on them. The first requirement is that their power 
of receptivity shall be intensified. Of God's willing- 
ness to lead them there is no question. The only 
point of uncertainty is in their ability to discern and 
to respond to His direction. Therefore they will be- 
gin with earnest and united prayer. This prayer 
\ will not be hurried ; it will be a sustained act of com- 
munion. And therein they will desire four things. 
First, they will together wait in silence for a more 
vivid sense of God's Presence and Reality. In the 
strain and bustle of ordinary life the vision of the 
unseen may easily grow dim ; they will tarry in still- 
ness before God, craving the penitence and cleans- 
ing through which it may once more be made clear 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 43 

to them. Next, they will together pray for the com- 
ing of the Kingdom. This will be no light and easy 
intercession ; they will reverently strive to view men 
from God's own standpoint, and, so far as may be, 
to enter into His sorrow for the world's sin and His 
sympathy with the world's need. And when they 
have thus learnt a little less imperfectly to see man- 
kind as God sees it, alike in its transgressions and in 
its ultimate possibilities, they will at last be ready, in 
the third place, to ask for light on the particular 
matter in which they need the Divine illumination. 
They will therefore pray together that in this special 
situation God's own design may be made plain to 
them. Lastlv, that all hindrance in themselves mav 
be removed, they will seek, before they turn to ex- 
amine the problem, to be freed from every form of 
self-assertion. In the consciously-realised presence 
of God, and relying on His aid, they will try to expel 
from their minds all previous bias, all personal pre- 
ferences and all self-seeking motives, and at what- 
ever cost, to will God's will both for themselves and 
for the world. 

This prayer, it is important to observe, is offered 
in an atmosphere of fellowship. The group of men 
engaged is more than a mere collection of individ- 



44 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

uals; it is a body of believers — a small but essential 
section of that living organism which is the Church 
of Christ, Himself its living Head. On this account 
the entire spiritual efficiency alike of every part and 
of the whole is immeasurably increased. Because of 
its mystical union with its fellows and with the 
Head, each separate member acquires a power never 
possessed and never attainable in isolation. The 
prayer of each, his penitence, his consecration, his 
very experience of God's Presence, is deepened and 
enriched by those of all; and, in its turn, "through 
that which every joint supplieth" the entire body is 
itself built up in love. This is no idle dream of what 
might be; it is a statement of what actually takes 
place. And it is in this atmosphere of a fellowship 
both real and realised that those who employ the 
method we interpret are first made ready for the 
revelation of God's will. 

From this act of united communion they will pass, 
in the same spirit of dependence, to their task of 
serious deliberation. The problem before them de- 
mands and must receive the most strenuous and en- 
lightened thought that they are capable of affording. 
There could be no greater error than to infer from 
the stress laid on communion that the method is 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 45 

crudely quietistic, depreciating intelligence and 
trusting to vague and irrational impulses. On the 
contrary, we have met with no assemblies of men by 
whom the duty of sincere and resolute thinking is 
more clearly apprehended. True, their ultimate re- 
liance is upon a wisdom higher than their own. 
Christ's promise that His Spirit shall guide them 
into all the truth they believe to be, not merely a 
beautiful ideal, but also a practical fact on which 
they may safely count. None the less, beneath this 
confidence in a heavenly guidance there dwells no 
lurking hostility to human reason. The inference 
drawn is rather that, since God has made us rational 
beings, it is through our minds that He will most 
naturally lead us. Therefore, prepared by united 
communion, they turn in their search for God's w r ill 
to a frank and determined discussion. 

This brings us to another point at which for the 
proper understanding of the method, the utmost 
clearness becomes necessary. From first to last in 
all their discussions these men and women en- 
deavour to think and talk only in the spirit of their 
prayer. They will use their' brains, and use them, as 
we have said, at least as acutely as those who lay less 
practical stress upon prayer. But in all their thought 



46 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

their minds are made subject to a higher Control. 
That is to say, while they will bring their keenest in- 
telligence to bear upon the problem under considera- 
tion, they will do so not as men of self-assertion 
who cling tenaciously to views already formed, but 
as men who are honestly seeking God's guidance and 
therefore are prepared, even at the cost of strongly- 
rooted prejudices, to revise all earlier conclusions by 
any new light that He may reveal to them. 

This light they are ready to receive from any 
quarter. Indeed, they are more than ready, they are 
anxious, to do so. For they realise that in thought, 
as in all else, we are members one of another. Here 
once again the fundamental fact of corporate life 
emerges into prominence. No one man's mind, 
however cultivated and sincere, can perceive the 
whole truth, whether in relation to conduct or in re- 
lation to thought. As the physical light, falling on 
various objects, is reflected in various shades of 
colour, each but a partial presentation of its great 
original, so the light of truth, reflected from men's 
different minds, is found to exhibit many different 
aspects, in no single one of which can truth's perfect 
image be discerned. In the second case, as in the 
first, the pure white light is gained only when all 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 47 

these partial reflections are combined. Each indivi- 
dual's view needs to be checked and supplemented 
by the view of his fellows. It is not merely that no 
separate human being ever has attained a perfect 
wisdom; as a separate human being he never can 
attain it. He has been so made that he will find his 
fullest life only in fellowship with others — a fact 
which applies to his intellectual life as well as to life 
in all its other phases. As, then, he seeks to form 
right judgments, he has no power, even if he had 
the will, to be strictly independent. He w r as born a 
member of a body, and not even in his thinking has 
he the right to say to another, "I have no need of 
thee." 

That being the case, men who are seeking God's 
guidance in any given situation, and believe that 
their minds are the instruments through which He 
is wont to direct them, will be eager to welcome light 
from every possible angle. It will be assumed that 
no single point of view contains the whole truth 
which God is waiting to reveal ; and this will be ac- 
knowledged even by those among whom that point 
of view may be most strongly maintained. But it 
will also be assumed that every point of view 
adopted by an honest thinker will probably embody 



48 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

some aspect of the truth — an aspect which, how- 
ever partial or exaggerated, yet cannot safely be 
neglected in the final synthesis ; and this fact will be 
freely recognised even by those who regard that 
standpoint with the utmost initial prejudice. In 
other words, the path to truth, whether in thought 
or in action, lies along the line of accepting light 
from every quarter — even from that with which at 
first we have the least degree of sympathy — and in 
focussing these scattered rays into as real a unity as 
w T e are then able to attain. 

Two features of this method call, even at the risk 
of repetition, for a slightly extended emphasis. 
(a) Since an open mind, which is only another name 
for willingness to be taught, is one of its essential 
conditions, to ignore the view of those whose ideas 
are opposed to one's own; to regard it with sus- 
picion ; to treat it with sarcasm or ridicule ; to over- 
come it merely by some clever ruse; most of all, to 
deny, in the Name of Christ, the fundamental Chris- 
tian spirit by making the difference a ground for 
angry and unmannerly quarrels — to do any or all of 
these things is as unsafe as it is pagan. However 
little we realise the fact, it may in reality be to close 
our eyes to one of the sources from which some ray 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 49 

of God's own light was meant to come to us, and so 
to limit His power of leading us into the full knowl- 
edge of His will. Therefore, every man is not only 
allowed but expected to say exactly w T hat he thinks, 
without the slightest fear or misunderstanding or 
offence. It is a basal assumption that truth is 
stronger than error and even than partial truth, and 
that undue sensitiveness at hearing one's own views 
criticised or contradicted is a latent form of self- 
assertion, unworthy of a Christian, (b) Though 
even- man's conviction is thus entitled to respect, it 
is accepted only in so far as, after due consideration, 
it appears to be the medium of Divine direction. 
To assign an added weight to a man's opinion in vir- 
tue of his wealth, on the ground of his status, social 
or official, or because, forgetful of the Christian 
mind, he manifests a dogmatic and imperious tem- 
per, is nothing less than a betrayal of truth. Any 
who expected to command so adventitious an im- 
portance would be placing human considerations be- 
fore the interests of the Kingdom: any who yielded 
to it would be guilty of collusion in the sin. This 
error, like the wish to silence judgments contrary to 
our own, proves a most serious obstacle in the way 
of God's guidance. It involves, in fact, a denial of 



50 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

the very spirit and temper by which that guidance is 
conditioned. 

In conversation conducted on such principles as 
these the clear and definite guidance of God may be 
confidently expected. Badly stated in black and 
white, this truth may seem somewhat vague and un- 
convincing: experienced in actual practice, its im- 
pressiveness is at times almost startling, and some of 
its definite results have been remarkable. For when 
self-assertion has once been forsaken, and through 
its removal men's minds are at last made truly recep- 
tive, a very real and precious fellowship in thought 
is rendered possible. Mind acts freely on mind, 
each in its turn exploring, checking, challenging the 
other. The thought of each is quickened and stimu- 
lated. It rises to possibilities as yet unrealised in its 
moments of solitary activity. Exaggerations are 
corrected, deficiencies supplied, the sense of propor- 
tion duly adjusted. And in the process many earlier 
differences of view are found to disappear. A per- 
ceptible rapprochement is effected, and in the end a 
measure of agreement reached which at the outset 
would have appeared in the highest degree improb- 
able. It is in this way that, as each individual 
thinker approaches nearer to a common centre, the 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 51 

wonderful phenomenon of corporate thought is ex- 
perienced. 

It must not be supposed, of course, that this re- 
sult is always, or even generally, achieved with ease. 
The process is one which calls for determined 
thinking and untiring patience. To seem to suggest 
that, even in such an atmosphere, difficulties con- 
veniently vanish of themselves would be entirely 
misleading and untrue. Initial differences of judg- 
ments are not to be reconciled by hastily-considered 
suggestions or within a previously determined time- 
limit : they yield only to the disinterested search 
which is prepared to spare neither time nor effort in 
seeking for the truth. In such a search, indeed, the 
first stage will often seem to accentuate rather than 
to reduce the difficulties. For since, in the final syn- 
thesis, due weight is to be assigned to the truth un- 
derlying every standpoint that can fairly be de- 
fended, the earliest step of all must be to bring each 
difficulty out into the open light, to consider it 
frankly without bias, and to endeavour to appreciate 
its degree of strength no less than the points at 
which it is capable of adjustment. Discussion of the 
differences of judgment thus thrown into clear relief 
will naturally issue in more than one kind of result. 



52 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

Sometimes the differences will be resolved more 
quickly; at other times with greater effort. Some- 
times the agreement reached will be complete; at 
other times it will be only partial. In each alterna- 
tive, however, the progress from diversity towards 
unity will normally be found to be so marked and so 
impressive that no mere power of human persuasion 
will any longer appear sufficient to account for it. 
In the view of those by whom it has actually been 
experienced, there is only one explanation which will 
satisfy the facts. In response to their united prayer 
and faith they have received a very real and definite 
guidance of God. 



Ill 



So great a claim can scarcely be left expressed in 
terms so general. It demands that we should face 
the last and most difficult question raised by our in- 
quiry. With what degree of certainty may the 
Divine guidance be expected by those who seek for 
it in corporate thought and prayer ? 

This question is of vital importance to our whole 
discussion, and no reply can be considered satisfac- 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 53 

tory which is not based upon clear and careful dis- 
crimination. 

The first requirement is that we should recognise 
frankly those limitations of our own receptivity 
which are inseparable from our present conditions 
of life. God's power to guide us, for example, must 
surely be restricted by our imperfections of mind 
and of character. It must further depend upon the 
thoroughness of our own thinking, since, in a w^orld 
of order, all slackness of mental effort and every re- 
fusal to pierce below the surface of things to the 
deeper issues that are involved will inevitably bear 
its just and proper penalty of loss. Moreover, if 
our view of fellowship has been correct and the com- 
plete vision of truth is framed from "that which 
every' ' part "supplieth," there is a sense in which the 
perfect vision can never be possible to a limited 
group of men and women : it must wait until every 
member of the body concerned has brought his con- 
tribution to it. To this extent, then, so long as the 
circle of seekers is composed of fallible men and 
women and remains still limited in its range, even 
the Divine guidance, though the clearest possible in 
the circumstances, may be relative rather than ab- 
solute. 



54 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

There is a second point at which discrimination 
becomes necessary. It is important for our immedi- 
ate purpose to distinguish between two different 
types of problem in which the Divine guidance may 
be desired. We may seek for enlightenment either 
on some problem of truth or on some problem of 
conduct. The two cases must be considered sepa- 
rately. 

In the former case the results achieved will prob- 
ably always be less final and decisive. The questions 
involved are usually so profound in character, and 
demand for their elucidation so high a degree of 
mental ability and (often) so specialised an educa- 
tional training, that, in the natural order of God's 
working, no ordinary group of men and women 
would expect to be made the recipients of a new and 
ultimate revelation concerning them. What they 
may look for — and this in proportion to their intel- 
lectual efficiency and to the honesty and purposeful- 
ness of their thought — is a progressive power to un- 
derstand the revelation already given, and to re- 
interpret it to meet the special needs of their own 
generation. 

Even this limited progress will, as a rule, be only 
gradually achieved. Where problems of abstract 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 55 

truth are concerned, complete agreement is very dif- 
ficult to attain. As we have seen, the very richness 
and amplitude of God's truth produce differences in 
men's minds — differences indeed which, until higher 
synthesis has been reached, it is necessary in the in- 
terest of truth itself candidly to maintain. Doubt- 
less, since truth is one, all these differences are capa- 
ble of being resolved into a final unity, but the finite 
nature of our minds necessarily renders the process 
a very slow one. 

When, therefore, a group is concentrating upon a 
problem of this character, the immediate result, even 
on the method we have been expounding, may well 
be only partial agreement. This fact should afford 
no ground for discouragement. It does not prove 
that corporate prayer and thought are ineffective, 
for in these particular problems the method sets no 
time -limit for the Divine guidance. It should rather 
be construed either as a hint that the problem in 
question is not yet ripe for solution, or as a call to 
further and more strenuous thinking. Some con- 
sideration by which opposing views would be recon- 
ciled may have been overlooked, or the presupposi- 
tions on which the conversation has been conducted 
may be false and in need of closer scrutiny. In any 



56 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

of those events, it is important to notice, the tempor- 
ary check will itself mark one stage in the process of 
the Divine leading. 

Not even when the discussion ends in unanimity 
of judgment would it be safe, in this type of inquiry, 
to interpret the result forthwith as a sign of Divine 
direction. A group of men and women may be un- 
animous in error as well as in truth, and this might 
well be the case on the method before us if the as- 
sumptions with which they started were mistaken or 
the motive which inspired them were misdirected. 
Such a possibility must obviously be allowed for, 
and the unanimous judgment be accepted not as final 
but as tentative and designed for subsequent re-ex- 
amination. In particular, it is necessary to relate it 
to former revelations of truth. The authority of 
tradition, we admit, is by no means unlimited. But 
God has spoken to men in earlier generations as well 
as in our own, and all that we know of Him suggests 
that His word of today cannot deny His word of 
yesterday. There may be — we believe there will be 
— constant development in His revelation; but, with- 
out exception, it will be orderly development. Be- 
fore, therefore, we can assume that ideas on which 
we are led even into corporate agreement for part 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 57 

of the Divine truth, they must be tested by their 
power to assimilate themselves with the indubitable 
revelation of the past. There is perhaps no point at 
which the smaller group of seekers is less indepen- 
dent of the wider fellowship than in the search for 
abstract truth. 

Considerations like these will help us to determine 
the limits within which we may speak of the cer- 
tainty of God's guidance, when the method under re- 
view is applied to problems of thought. No claim is 
put forward that any small gathering of Christians, 
adopting the corporate method of inquiry, is there- 
upon free to expect either that it will be led by a 
series of quick stages into the fulness of Divine 
truth, or even that truth shall be necessarily ascribed 
to particular conclusions on which it may have 
reached ultimate agreement. All history shows, on 
the contrary, that God's revelation of truth is a 
gradual process, the very slowness of which forms 
part of man's educative discipline; and that the ad- 
vancement of this process demands, on the human 
side, the careful correlation of newer ideas with the 
conceptions of earlier thinkers. By those who seek 
for truth in fellowship, no less than by those who 
work in isolation, these primary conditions of their 



58 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

task must be accepted without reserve. In other 
words, in this first application of the method the 
certainty that we are being guided by God will be- 
long to our search for truth considered as a whole 
rather than to any particular result achieved on any 
particular occasion. 

Of that larger guidance, however, we may be ab- 
solutely assured. The claim we advance for the cor- 
porate method is, not that it abolishes the conditions 
which govern all other modes of investigation, but 
that it enables them to be satisfied with greater ease 
and completeness. In a group where true fellowship 
is enjoyed, the powers of the whole are larger than 
those of any of its parts. So stimulated and en- 
riched are the minds of those who compose it that 
their united perception of truth acquires a sensitive- 
ness and a sureness impossible to each of them in 
isolation. And this greater capacity to respond to 
truth involves a greater certainty of guidance. 
Granted the earnest purpose, the disinterested mo- 
tive and the teachable spirit, even the individual 
seeker, if the promises of Jesus hold good, may 
count with confidence on the Divine direction. But 
when, by the potent influence of fellowship, each of 
these qualities has been raised to a higher degree of 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 59 

efficiency, that confidence will be built upon a firmer 
foundation than ever. 

We pass from inquiries as to problems of truth to 
those directed to problems of conduct. At this point 
also it will be wise to draw somewhat careful dis- 
tinctions. 

The problem in question will sometimes be con- 
cerned with general principles of conduct. The issue 
raised, for example, may be that of the right Chris- 
tian attitude to the employment of force, to the ac- 
quisition and use of money, to social and political 
reformation, or to one of a hundred similar topics. 
In such cases what we have been saying will again 
be largely applicable. For where only abstract ideas 
of conduct are involved the line of division we have 
hitherto drawn is not altogether valid. Questions 
like these, although ultimately concerned with ac- 
tion, are at the same time problems of truths, differ- 
ing from the problems already considered only as 
relating to ethical rather than to theological or to 
philosophical truth. It follows that the conditions 
governing the one type of inquiry will be largely 
operative in the other also. An important difference, 
however, is deserving of notice. In the case of 



60 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

many ethical problems the mental ability and train- 
ing necessary to clear vision is at once more common 
and easier of attainment than in the case of prob- 
lems of pure thought. In consequence, the progress 
towards truth may be expected to be more speedy 
and by more definitely assured stages. 

At other times the question of conduct will be 
raised, not with respect to general principles but in 
the form of some concrete instance in which a more 
or less immediate decision is required. For exam- 
ple, a committee may have to select an important 
official, or a church or a society be called upon to 
choose between two or more rival policies of action. 
In these and similar cases the unspecified time-limit 
for guidance, available for the inquiries considered 
above, no longer remains permissible. A definite 
situation is presented, and within a fixed period, 
greater or less according to circumstances, a definite 
line of action must be accepted. Under such condi- 
tions those who seek for the Divine enlightenment 
by corporate prayer and thought may rightly look 
for a more immediate and decisive guidance. That 
in cases like these, men and women, resolutely striv- 
ing to learn God's Will for them in the spirit and 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 61 

with the earnestness which this method inculcates, 
should yet be left by Him without direction is, on 
the principles of Jesus, simply unthinkable. At this 
point, then, we venture to speak with uncompromis- 
ing assurance. In dealing with problems of truth 
we have recognised frankly the gradual nature of 
God's revelation and, with equal frankness, the con- 
sequent limitations by which His guidance may be 
conditioned. But in the type of problem now before 
us those particular limitations appear to be less 
effectual. For, while the revelation of abstract truth 
is addressed primarily to man's intellectual faculties, 
which he cannot altogether command, the disclosure 
of a concrete duty is addressed primarily to his will, 
the control of which lies largely within his own 
power. Moreover, in these cases, as we have said, 
the situation is urgent. Specific action is called for. 
The Divine guidance, if it is to be given at all, must 
be given within a recognised period; and, having 
promised it to those who "seek first the Kingdom," 
God cannot deny His promise. The one serious lim- 
itation possible at this point would arise from the 
seekers' own failure to satisfy the conditions of 
guidance. Only let them be faithful to those, and 
the Divine direction must be a certainty. 



62 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

How, then, in such cases as these, may this Divine 
direction be identified ? Let us return to the actual 
method of inquiry. The group of seekers have 
prayed together and talked together in the spirit we 
have endeavoured to describe. To what sort of con- 
clusion will their discussion lead them? Here, as in 
the search for abstract truth, there is more than one 
possibility. 

When everyone present is seeking the knowledge 
of God's will rather than a confirmation of his own 
preconceptions, the most pronounced difference of 
view will often disappear. Men and women who at 
first were far apart will in the end be found of one 
mind and judgment, and that, not infrequently, one 
which at the outset none of their number had either 
reached or even conceived. In all such instances the 
resultant unanimity may be interpreted — and, as 
consequent developments have repeatedly proved, 
may rightly be interpreted — as affording the mani- 
fest guidance of God Himself. 

At other times this perfect concord will not be at- 
tained. Difficulties will be reduced, but not wholly 
banished. Despite the most sympathetic considera- 
tion of one another's views the convictions of differ- 
ent individuals may still remain opposed. In that 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 63 

case a remedy for the apparent deadlock should be 
sought in silent corporate prayer, experience proving 
that, after a brief interval spent in such fellowship, 
difficulties which before had seemed insuperable 
have again and again been known to fade away. 
When circumstances permit, the final decision might, 
if necessary, be postponed to a subsequent occasion. 
Many of us are backward pupils in God's school and 
require to give plenty of time to our task of discern- 
ing His way. An agreement which has long ap- 
peared impossible will often be reached in the end 
through unstinted patience and renewed endeavour. 
Should that happy result, whether sooner or later. 
ensue, this ultimate unanimity, like that which was 
reached more immediately, will definitely indicate 
the Divine direction. 

The possibility remains that the difficulties ma}' 
none the less persist, and every effort towards com- 
plete agreement be frustrated. Even then faith in 
God's leading should abide unshaken. To imagine 
that He would withhold His guidance from those 
who seek it with strenuous prayer and self-renounc- 
ing devotion would be, as we have said, to abandon 
as impracticable some of the most solemn assurances 
of Jesus. When, therefore, full unanimity proves as 



64 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

yet impossible, we must assume that God's guidance 
is no less real and clear than in the more welcome 
issue. And that guidance, in circumstances like 
these, is to be identified with the degree of unanimity 
that has been- attained. So far as all, equally de- 
sirous of understanding His will, have been led to- 
gether to a single judgment, thus far, they may 
confidently believe, it is His will that they should 
proceed. 

Beyond that point we have no right to dogmatise. 
The continued existence of a convinced minority, 
after a search for God's will so thorough and so dis- 
interested, may possibly denote that all steps beyond 
those on which agreement has been reached are not, 
or at least are not yet, demanded by Him. Among 
those who practise the fellowship method of inquiry 
there are some who incline to this opinion, and par- 
ticular cases can doubtless be cited in which experi- 
ence has shown it to be correct. To give the princi- 
ple a general application, however, would be to 
assume a knowledge which we cannot command. It 
is always possible that the limited group of seekers 
may have lacked, or may have under-emphasised, 
some point of view by means of which unanimity 
might, after all, have been attained. There is the 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 65 



D 



further possibility that, unconsciously and in spite 
of their good-will, certan of their number may have 
allowed their prejudices to influence their judgment. 
Only if a group were to consist of ideal men and 
women, accomplishing their task with perfect effici- 
ency, could this negative principle of guidance be 
applied with an}' degree of confidence. At this 
point, therefore, all dogmatism would be unwise. 

It is with the positive principles of guidance that 
this volume is more immediately concerned. And 
here it is intended to be quite definite in its teaching. 
With regard to the question raised in the preceding 
paragraph there is abundant ground for hesitation, 
but on the main, positive issue before us our claim 
may well be more confident and more explicit. So 
far as the problem involved is that of guidance for 
action, our aim has been to advance three specific 
propositions which, after so lengthy a discussion, it 
may be useful briefly to recapitulate : 

1. That, on the lines laid down, a group of people 
will often be carried from initial differences of 
judgment to a unanimity which would otherwise be 
unattainable ; 

2. That the common judgment thus reached will 



66 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

often be so different from, and so plainly an advance 
upon, the judgment with which any of them began, 
as to suggest that the entire group has been defi- 
nitely guided by a Higher Will than its own ; and 

3. that, when this is the case, the unanimous 
judgment attained, whether it cover the whole or 
only a part of the problem under consideration, may 
be accepted zvith absolute confidence as a revelation 
from God Himself. 

So uncompromising an assertion of the, Divine 
guidance and so close a definition of the means by 
which it can be recognised, may, in the judgment of 
some readers, appear to be bold to the point of rash- 
ness. Nevertheless, with respect to the type of prob- 
lem to which they have been confined, they are held 
and stated with deliberate conviction. To call atten- 
tion to them, indeed, is one of the main designs with 
which the present volume has been written. They 
are not the outcome of idle theorising: as the suc- 
ceeding chapter will show, they are the fruit of 
widespread and repeated experience. And, tested in 
actual practice, they have been so signally justified 
by their results that, in the view of an increasing- 
number of sagacious men and women, they contain 



Felloii'ship in Thought and Prayer 67 

the promise of an altogether new hope, alike for the 
Church and for the world to which she ministers. 

Here, then, is a definite and practical method of 
seeking to learn the will of God. Its basal assump- 
tion is that of Scripture — the abiding reality of the 
Divine guidance. It does not, however, in any final 
sense, oppose the Divine guidance to human reason. 
It teaches, rather, that, instead of being alternative 
means of direction between which we have to 
choose, these two are complementary the one to the 
other. We have not to trust either Divine guidance 
or human reason: our reliance should be upon 
Divine guidance revealed through human reason; 
but through human reason disciplined for this very 
purpose in two ways — firstly, by communion with 
God, and secondly, by fellowship in thought and 
prayer with other men. 

It is this emphasis upon fellowship — with our 
fellow-men as well as with God — that forms the dis- 
tinctive mark of the method we have been studying. 
This emphasis does not ignore the place of the indi- 
vidual in the world's moral and religious develop- 
ment. Most of our progress in the past has been in- 
spired by great leaders of thought and action, and 



68 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

the need for them will probably never be outgrown. 
But — apart from the fact that even they are largely 
the product and mouthpiece of the common ten- 
dencies of their age — the personalities of great 
leaders are not the only medium through which 
Divine illumination may come to us. In the fellow- 
ship of ordinary men and women, consecrated by 
their devotion to Christ and to one another, there 
lies a power which neither the world nor the Church 
of the present day has learnt adequately to appre- 
ciate. 

To the value and reality of this power it has been 
our aim to invite attention, and with this end in view 
we have expounded one method by which it may be 
applied. Needless to say, this method is not the 
only one available : in the great search for truth and 
duty the principles of fellowship may be explored 
along many other detailed lines than those traced out 
in the present chapter. Nor, again, is the method 
possessed of any quasi-magical virtue, as though it 
could yield men direction in return for its merely 
mechanical application: its efficacy resides exclu- 
sively in the spiritual aim and attitude by which it is 
conditioned. The claim we have sought to make for 
it is, neither that it stands alone as a medium for 



Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 69 

guidance nor that it has acquired any arbitrary or 
artificial value, but that, applied with strict fidelity to 
its underlying principles, it has been proved by ex- 
perience to be a real and powerful instrument of 
progress. Its employment even on a limited scale 
has already produced definite and remarkable re- 
sults : its latent possibilities we believe to be incal- 
culable. The Church in this generation has yet to 
learn the secret of fellowship. The consequences of 
such an enlightenment no prophet could foretell. It 
may be that for the Church to master that secret 
would be to solve her most inveterate problems and 
to find the key to the triumph of the Kingdom. 



Chapter Three : The Test of 
Experience 

IN the previous chapter certain specific claims 
have been advanced for the practice of fellow- 
ship in thought and prayer : it is well that at this 
point they should be substantiated by means of con- 
crete examples. Our acceptance of alleged truth is 
made, and rightly made, dependent upon its ability 
to satisfy the test of experience. It therefore be- 
comes necessary for us to show that the method de- 
scribed yields definite and appreciable results in the 
life of those by whom it has been undertaken. 

The writer's earliest enlightenment as to its powej 
was gained in association with the British Student 
Christian Movement, through the kindness of whose 
leaders he was allowed to take part in the prepara- 
tions for one of the Movement's great quadrennial 
Conferences. This kindness has been further in- 
creased by the permission, now granted to him, to 
give a brief account of the various steps by which 
that Conference was preceded. The method under 
review could scarcely receive a better illustration. 

The Conference in question was to be composed 
of considerably more than a thousand students — 
representatives of universities and colleges from al- 

(70) 



The Test of Experience 71 

most every part of Europe; and its essential aim was 
to impress more deeply upon the student world the 
imperative claim of the Foreign Missionary enter- 
prise. It was plainly a strategic opportunity and one 
which called for the wisest and most careful prepar- 
ation. The preparation began two and a half years 
beforehand. In the earliest stages of the process the 
leaders of the Movement used from time to time to 
meet together in search of the answer to a single 
question : What is it God's will to say concerning 
His Kingdom to the student world in the present 
generation? The question itself is worthy of a mo- 
ment's scrutiny. The inquiry was not, What are the 
views for which we leaders should like to secure 
attention ? Nor was it, What distinguished speakers 
can we bring together in order to announce an im- 
pressive "platform"? Both questions would have 
assumed that the key to the situation was to be 
found in human wisdom and eloquence. These men 
and women were convinced, on the contrary, that if 
the Conference was actually to inspire truer thought 
and action in relation to the Kingdom, nothing less 
than the Divine guidance would suffice. And that 
guidance they, as Christians, believed to be accessi- 
ble to them. The Spirit had been given to guide men 



*]2 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

into truth : those, therefore, who, setting aside self- 
will, sought in humility to learn only the will of God, 
might be sure that they would not be left without 
direction. Accordingly, they met, as we have said, 
to wait together upon God until His mind was made 
know r n to them. 

The method employed was that of corporate 
prayer and thought. As our earlier study will have 
prepared us to expect, there was no disparagement 
of the human mind as the instrument of the Divine 
guidance. Sound judgment, practised insight into 
the student-attitude to life, and considerable expert 
knowledge of the problems and opportunities of the 
mission field — all were brought under contribution. 
And yet the confidence of this little group was re- 
posed on none of these things. While the ideas thus 
furnished were thrown into the common stock, the 
minds that were informed by them looked for, and 
were made subject to, a Higher Guidance. And the 
Higher Guidance was actually experienced. Little 
by little, the general outlines of a message began to 
emerge. The leaders were conscious, as they prayed 
and talked together, of a progressive unity in their 
thinking, until, having started with acknowledged 
differences of opinion, they found themselves in the 



The Test of Experience 73 

end to be of one mind as to the main aspect of truth 
which at that period most of all demanded emphasis. 
The next question requiring attention was that of 
the speakers who should be invited to expound thf 
message to the Conference. At this point again the 
method of preparation is highly instructive. If the 
belief was justified that, at the present stage in the 
history of the Kingdom, God had His own message 
for the student world, there must be somewhere 
those whom He Himself had been qualifying to de- 
liver it — men and women on whose minds His Spirit 
had already been impressing the particular aspects 
of truth of which that message was to be composed. 
The next step, therefore, was to be led into touch 
with these. In the high purpose to which the leaders 
of the Movement were committed, the well-known 
speaker, as the well-known speaker, counted for 
nothing : it was God's prepared messengers, whether 
prominent or obscure, of whom they stood in need. 
And who should lead them to these messengers but 
God Himself? Once more, then, they resorted to 
that method of guidance which experience has again 
and again proved to be so effective; and, as they 
talked together in the spirit and atmosphere of 
prayer, they were gradually led, as before, into a 



74 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

unity of judgment which they interpreted as the 
Divine direction. 

About a year before the Conference itself was 
due, and again a few months later, the speakers thus 
selected were invited, with several other trusted 
friends of the Movement, to meet the leaders in a 
brief Retreat, each Retreat lasting about three days. 
It was at this point that the present writer was able 
to join in their fellowship. These two Retreats mark 
yet another stage in the careful preparations that 
were made. The need for them will easily be 
recognised. The speakers chosen represented a 
striking diversity of ecclesiastical standpoint. The 
specific subjects entrusted to them, moreover, though 
essentially interrelated, were of necessity concerned 
with many different regions of experience. No one 
could fail to see the danger that, when the Confer- 
ence assembled, it might furnish merely a series of 
disconnected addresses rather than, through many 
parts, one real and living message. If such a peril 
were to be averted, those who were called to be lead- 
ers or speakers must realise beforehand, in close 
mental and spiritual communion, their own essential 
oneness in Christ and the ultimate unity of the truths 
to be interpreted. Accordingly, these days of retire- 



The Test of Experience 75 

ment were set apart that, without haste or distrac- 
tion, we might have fellowship one w r ith another in 
Him. And the purpose placed before us was 
achieved. For, as we prayed and talked in the 
atmosphere of those Retreats, not only w T ere we our- 
selves drawn closer to one another in spirit and out- 
look, but the general outline of the message was 
gradually filled in for us, and out of many initial dif- 
ferences the various truths which, it was believed, 
the Conference was intended to impress were welded 
together into a living unity. 

In the approach to this important Conference, 
therefore, reliance was placed upon fellowship in 
thought and prayer, first for determining the general 
outlines of the message; secondly, for selecting the 
speakers who should be invited to interpret it ; and, 
thirdly, for minimising the risks of divergent stand- 
points and securing that, though many different sub- 
jects were to be considered, they should yet com- 
bine to produce a single, unified impression. 

Now, what was the result of this deliberately ac- 
cepted method of preparation? Few who attended 
the successive sessions of the Conference would 
hesitate as to the reply. In the first place, to those 
who were looking for the coming of the Kingdom 



y6 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

the Conference brought a clear and definite message. 
It was far more than a series of interesting and in- 
spiring meetings : it yielded a new vision which, 
faithfully obeyed, would remain as a life-long pos- 
session. In particular, there emerged the suggestive 
view that the problem of Foreign Missions abroad 
and the problem of our social and industrial condi-. 
tions at home are interrelated with an intimacy of 
which few of us had previously possessed any appre- 
hension. It would probably not be too much to say 
that, through the men and women present at the 
Conference and through the influence gained by the 
volume of published addresses, this conception has 
now received a degree of attention never before as- 
signed to it, so that, to this extent, a permanent con- 
tribution has been made to our missionary thought. 
The further truth that the existence of both the 
problems concerned is ultimately to be traced to a 
subtle selfishness for the perpetuation of which not 
even Christian people are free from grave responsi- 
bility, if a view already to some extent recognised, 
was interpreted with a freshness and impressiveness 
which made it appear almost a new conception. 
Along with this illumination for the mind, we were 
conscious throughout of a subdued but most potent 



The Test of Experience jy 

appeal to the heart and conscience. The vision was 
one which demanded translation into obedience. In 
those hours of solemn, earnest thought to nearly two 
thousand men and women, the finest fruit of the 
universities of Europe, there came the voice of God, 
summoning them afresh to consecration and to per- 
sonal service; and it is a matter of simple knowledge 
that many of their number heard at that Conference 
the definite call to their life's work. 

In the second place, this clear message of the Con- 
ference proved, as we had hoped, a unified message. 
We have seen that, humanly speaking, such a result 
was far from being a foregone conclusion. On the 
contrary, the final impression carried away by the 
delegates might well have been one of many voices, 
not merely differing but even discordant. Despite, 
however, the very varied fields of thought brought 
under review and the selection of speakers ranging 
in their ecclesiastical convictions from the Friend to 
the High Churchman, the manifold and diverse ele- 
ments of teaching presented were fused into a re- 
markable unity. The resultant effect was that not 
of separate chords, but of one harmonious theme. 
Strangely yet indubitably the many voices were lost 
in a Voice. 



78 Fellozvship in Thought and Prayer 

In brief, — and let due weight be given to each 
word in this bold but deliberate statement — men and 
women realised that in those memorable sessions 
they had been brought face to face with God, and 
had received from Him a definite message and a 
definite call — a message and a call which would re- 
main with them long after the Conference itself had 
become an episode of the past. At the present time 
there are workers all over the world who look back 
with gratitude to "Liverpool, 191 2" as one of the 
few outstanding epochs of their spiritual experience. 

One detail, which happened to be brought to the 
writer's personal knowledge, is too significant to 
pass unrecorded. Among the speakers was a man 
who had hitherto been a stranger to the Student 
Movement. For several years a certain aspect of 
truth had been impressing itself upon his mind with 
inexorable insistence. The more carefully he con- 
sidered it the stronger became his conviction that, 
in the present age, its proclamation formed a vital 
part of the Church's message. At the same time, 
the truth in question had never secured for itself an 
adequate recognition in the general Christian teach- 
ing, and he had long been waiting for an audience 
sufficiently representative in character to ensure for 



The Test of Experience 79 

his view the opportunity of more widespread atten- 
tion. An unexpected invitation to speak at this 
Student Movement Conference gave him the ideal 
platform for his purpose, enabling him to reach the 
ear of many destined to play an influential part in 
guiding the thought of the next generation. Some 
time later, in a letter which the writer has been al- 
lowed to see, the Chairman of that Conference 
stated that this was the very line of thought which 
some of them had for years been waiting to have 
placed before students. The incident needs no elab- 
oration. On the one hand, we have these leaders of 
student life feeling the need of a certain emphasis 
in the Movement's teaching; on the other hand, we 
have a man on whose mind, quite unknown to them, 
God had been impressing the very truth which they 
had desired to make clear. Instead of inviting some 
prominent speaker for the sake of his name, they 
waited in united thought and prayer for the Divine 
guidance. And God led them to a man, a stranger 
to themselves, whom He Himself had long been pre- 
paring for this very service. Can this be due to 
accident, or does it not rather suggest that in actual 
practice the method is one that works? 



80 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

It has seemed well, for the sake of clearness, to 
present one example of the method under considera- 
tion with some degree of fulness. The reader, how- 
ever, is asked to remember that this is only a single 
illustration out of many which might have been se- 
lected. Numerous other instances could be drawn 
from the history of the Student Movement alone. 
Indeed, if we had space to offer adequate testimony 
to the method's effectiveness, that great association 
itself would constitute one of the most impressive 
proofs to be adduced. The Student Movement is 
probably the most wonderful development of mod- 
ern Christianity. In the judgment of tens of thou- 
sands who have had contact with it, it stands in the 
religious world of today unrivalled for the clearness 
of its spiritual power. And how has this young 
community, of small and modest origin, advanced 
to its present position of leadership among 
Churches ? It is by means of the method which this 
volume is expounding. In conversation with the 
writer the secretary of the Movement in Great 
Britain once asserted this explanation of its growth 
with unmistakable emphasis. Reviewing, he said, a 
period of some twenty years, he could clearly dis- 
tinguish certain outstanding crises in the Move- 



The Test of Experience 81 

ment's history. On each occasion the leaders had 
been confronted by a situation in which, while im- 
portant action of some kind had become necessary, 
they themselves were baffled as to the right decision. 
On each occasion, in their own uncertainty, they had 
set apart a period for quiet retirement, that through 
corporate prayer and thought they might seek to 
learn the will of God. And in every instance, as 
they had prayed and thought together, their perplex- 
ity had been dissipated, one difficulty after another 
had gradually disappeared, and in the end some 
course of action had been discerned as to the wis- 
dom of which they had now become united in their 
judgment. At the time itself they had often been 
unable to grasp the full significance of the resolve 
taken. But today, looking back and seeing events in 
their true perspective, they could perceive that the 
occasions concerned had been the critical turning- 
points in the history of the Movement. It was pre- 
cisely at these moments that they had entered upon 
some new mode of activity which could be recog- 
nised, in retrospect, as essential to the Movement's 
providential course, so that, had they arrived at any 
other judgment than that actually adopted, one of 
their most fruitful spheres of influence would now 



82 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

have been wanting to them. % To sum up their long 
experience in a sentence, the times at which the 
Guiding Hand of God has been most manifestly 
present in their history have always been those at 
which they have resorted to this particular method 
of inquiry. They have thus been convinced by re- 
peated experiment that in the fellowship of thought 
and prayer the definite will of God Himself has in 
very truth been disclosed to them. 

To other groups of men and women the same kind 
of experience has been granted. Is it a mere coin- 
cidence, for example, that it was by this method of 
preparation that the Edinburgh Missionary Confer- 
ence was preceded? That Conference forms the 
most notable Council of modern Church history. To 
hundreds of earnest Christians it proved nothing less 
than a new revelation. In spiritual power and wis- 
dom it transcended anything that they had pre- 
viously known. Indeed, they seemed to themselves, 
during its sessions, to have come into touch, for the 
first time, with something like Apostolic Chris- 
tianity. Many of us have no doubt as to the ex- 
planation of this : they were experiencing the fruit 
of that clear guidance and rich inspiration which 
God had been pleased to grant to those who had 



The Test of Experience 83 

sought Him in corporate thought and prayer. 

At the present time various other groups of Chris- 
tians are meeting in reliance upon this mode of ap- 
proach to God. The Free Church Fellowship, which 
came into being in 191 1, has attracted to its member- 
ship large numbers of the abler and more ardent 
young ministers and laymen in English Noncon- 
formity. The influence of its annual Conference has 
already transformed the spirit and labours of men 
and women all over the country, and, with the 
promise of great usefulness, it is employing the 
"corporate" method to conduct a careful investiga- 
tion into the present-day message and mission of 
Christianity. The inner story of the growth of this 
Fellowship, of the difficulties surmounted, and of 
the manifest direction granted by God in moments 
of grave perplexity, would constitute a remarkable 
document, were it ever published for the world to 
read. One crisis in particular, in which, after an 
honest division of opinion so serious and protracted 
as even to threaten the continued unity of the group, 
patient loyalty to the chosen method of inquiry 
finally issued in happy agreement, forms an episode 
which no one concerned in it is ever likely to forget. 
More recently an Anglican Fellowship, created on 



84 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

the same basis, has come into existence, and there 
are separate Fellowships of a similar type in the 
Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist and Methodist 
Churches, as well as among the Society of Friends. 
There is not one of their number which has not 
proved a centre of new spiritual life and vision 
among its members. Higher ideals of service, a 
deeper and more intelligent devotion, a stronger 
self -discipline and a more conscientious unselfish- 
ness — these are the gifts which the new Fellowship- 
life has communicated. God in Christ has been 
found a greater Reality; His perfect will for the 
world has become at once more welcome and more 
imperative; fellow-feeling with the entire human 
family has been intensified; in a word, the whole 
spiritual life has been re-vivified. And it is especi- 
ally noteworthy that some who have approached the 
Fellowship's method with hesitation and even with 
suspicion have been transformed by actual contact 
with it into its most zealous exponents and defend- 
ers. 

Nor is our brief survey yet complete. Mutatis 
mutandis, the same fundamental method appears to 
underlie the work of the Laymen's Missionary 
Movement, of the Christian Crusade and of the In- 



The Test of Experience 85 

terdenominational Conference of Social Service Un- 
ions. In these, as in each of the method's applica- 
tions, we recognise a necessary adaptation to the 
genius of a particular organisation : but alike in their 
great central gatherings and in their smaller local 
conferences these movements present the same essen- 
tial features as those we have been attempting to de- 
lineate — the deliberate retirement for a sustained 
period of communion, the determined act of submis- 
sion to the will of God, and the resolute search for 
the Divine guidance through the medium of corpor- 
ate prayer and thought. The inspiration received 
and diffused by means of these movements is too 
well known to demand description. But one general 
characteristic — shared by them in common with all 
the other groups of which we have been writing — is 
especially deserving of emphasis: the majority of 
those who value them most highly are men whose 
time is exceptionally occupied. From such a fact 
the method of fellowship in thought and prayer re- 
ceives a tribute of a singularly convincing character. 
So real and so precious is the inspiration which it 
mediates that, year by year, several consecutive days 
are eagerly devoted to its practice by many of the 
busiest men in Christendom. 



86 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

This refreshment of spiritual life, therefore, is 
being experienced in many different directions. In- 
deed, so uniformly does it seem to follow upon the 
sincere acceptance of the principles under considera- 
tion that it begins to present the appearance of a new 
movement of the Divine Spirit, breaking through 
into almost all the Churches. As yet, the cloud is 
"as small as a man's hand," but, in the view of those 
who have perceived it, it is rich in its promise of the 
world's renewal. And the hope inspired becomes 
yet stronger when we remember that this emphasis 
upon faith in God's specific guidance, upon thought 
and prayer as the natural medium for its communi- 
cation, and upon the fact of fellowship as one of the 
deepest realities of human experience, instead of be- 
ing a modern innovation, merely marks a return to 
some of the fundamental conceptions of New Testa- 
ment Christianity. 



Chapter Four : Fellowship 
in Action 

IF our argument is valid, on the one hand, that 
a relatively untapped source of immense power j 
lies in fellowship in thought and in prayer ; and, 
on the other hand, that the world is in peril of chaos 
for lack of this very gift, it must follow that the im- 
mediate and sustained practice of fellowship is vital 
at once to the life of the Church and to the saving of 
the world. It is not that the Church has the choice 
whether she will go on living without fellowship or 
with it. There is no such alternative. If she has 
fellowship she will have life — abundantly. But if 
she fails in fellowship she will die. And with her 
would surely die the world's last great hope of a life 
of enduring and ordered freedom for all races of 
men. 

We hold the lively hope of the Kingdom of God. 
We believe in the Church as His organ for bringing 
into being that new humanity which is the Kingdom 
on earth. Yet, we see the Church divided and fal- 
tering at its task, failing at once in vision and in ac- 
tion, largely through the defects of its experience 
and practice of fellowship in Christ; and the world 

(87) 



S\ 



88 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

in peril through lack of her leadership. The chal- 
lenge is absolute and ultimate. 

What, then, are we — here and now — to do ? 

We are called, first, to build up a new life of fel- 
lowship in the Church for the world. The Christian 
Society, as we have seen, is ideally a spiritual fellow- 
ship dominated by the idea of the Kingdom of God. 
It is a brotherhood so intimately united with Christ 
that it is His body; its members are His members. 
It is so filled and fused with the Holy Spirit that its 
separate elements are fitly framed together in His 
living temple. It has the mind of Christ so fully 
and in such unity that His will is its will and it 
thinks His thought. And as His thought and will 
are for the redemption of men everywhere, that aim 
— the coming of His Kingdom — dominates its life. 

Holding this ideal of the life of the Church before 
us steadily, with its outline clearly focussed, we dis- 
cover at least four lines along which the practice of 
fellowship in the Church can be adventured; each 
avenue of exploration being vitally linked with all 
the others. There is, first, the life of that congrega- 
tion of Christian folk with whom we worship under 
one roof; there is, secondly, fellowship in coopera- 
tion with the other local groups or congregations — 



Felloivship in Action 89 

the Christians of other denominations in the place 
where we live ; there is, thirdly, the whole life of the 
denomination to which our own little local congrega- 
tion belongs; and there is, fourthly, the fellowship 
on the larger scale of "the Holy Church throughout 
all the world." 



For almost all of us the first and often the most 
difficult ground of our practice of fellowship is in 
the place where we live and with the people with 
whom we meet for worship. Yet a lack of quick, 
vital fellowship in the local congregation invalidates [ 
all effort everywhere. It is often easier to love in 
the abstract the brother whom we have not seen 
than to hold concrete continuous fellowship with the 
brother with whom we travel to the City every day. 

Here it is not so much new organisation that is 
wanted as a new spirit. As Matthew Arnold says,* 
"That which attaches people to us is the spirit we are 
of and not the machinery we employ." 

The local experiment of fellowship need not be 



* Celtic Literature. 



90 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

announced, — indeed, normally it comes better un- 
heralded. The less self-conscious it is the fuller and 
more natural is its life. To strengthen fellowship 
we need, not publicity, but practice. 

To have the ideal of the world-kingdom of God 
simply and silently dominating the life and fusing 
the will of any group of people in a Church is a lea- 
ven that can change its whole temper. That group 
may be responsible for the Church organisation (the 
Churchwarden's meeting, the Leader's meeting, the 
Diaconate, the Elder's Meeting, or whatever its 
name may be), or it may be the Sunday School 
Teacher's Preparation Class, or the Class meeting, 
or the group gathered as a Study Circle round a 
leader. 

There need be no neglect of the problems of light- 
ing, heating, and generally financing the fabric of 
the church and school if some time is given to 
thought and prayer on the supreme object for which, 
after all, the lighting and heating and indeed all the 
organisation exists, i. e. y the spiritual life of the 
Church in relation to the Kingdom of God. In sim- 
ple fact the "practical" business man who sometimes 
criticises any attempt at devotional fellowship in 
such meetings on the ground that it wastes time is — 



Fellowship in Action 91 

even on the "practical" issue — absolutely wrong. It 
has been proved in innumerable instances that minds 
fused by common devotion proceed far more swift- 
ly, more surely, and more unanimously to right con- 
clusions on organisation and finance than do minds 
that have shared no preliminary fellowship. "To 
pray," quite literally, "is to work," and to work 
swiftly, smoothly, and efficiently. 

No cut and dried scheme can be devised for the 
problem of fellowship in the local Church. No 
"fussy" and widely proclaimed method will succeed 
for long. If one desires to develop in the Church 
such a spirit or to increase it where it already exists, 
the best approach is by a preparation of a man's own 
life and a dedication of his own will, followed by the 
quiet contemplation and acceptance of opening and \ 
possibilities in such groups as are enumerated above. 

A multitude of examples might be given of the 
application of fellowship through and in the local 
congregation or in the lesser organisations that have 
just been named. There is no problem of the local 
Church that cannot be grappled with along this line. 

The Sunday School, for instance, is crippled for 
lack of teachers of the right devotion and of ade- 
quate capacity. If the problem is thought through 



92 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

(not merely talked through) and prayed through 
persistently and inventively, a solution will certainly 
be found. The will of God for that school will be 
discovered in a richer sense than before ; its concep- 
tion of its own raison d'etre and of its relation to the 
Kingdom of God in the life of the younger genera- 
tion will be incalculably enriched. It may and will 
call for blended patience, pertinacity, and daring; 
but, if the conditions precedent are fulfilled, in a 
spiritual fellowship that is sincere and passionate, 
the issue is beyond doubt, though it may be unex- 
pected and even disconcerting. 

The same principle holds true of all the problems 
and organisations of the local Church — the men's 
and women's meetings, the finance of its own domes- 
tic operations and of its work in the sphere of social 
relief and in the foreign field, the election of its offi- 
cers, its intellectual life in its literary or debating 
societies, its study circles, and the enrichment and 
quickening of its devotional life. 

There is room also for original experiments like 
that of the minister who every year takes away to 
some quiet holiday resort in the summer a consider- 
able group of the younger members of his church 
for a little "summer school" or "retreat" or "confer- 



Fellowship in Action 93 

ence"; where they face together the responsibilities 
of that church in relation to the coming of the King- 
dom of God — responsibilities that are, for every 
Church, at once local, civic, provincial, national and 
world-wide. 

Opportunities for developing fellowship locally lie 
immediately at each man's door — or even within his 
own doors! The sustained will to live the life of 
fellowship despite any coldness or crankiness that 
tends to chill or break spiritual unity is the founda- 
tion of the Church's life and is bound in the long 
run to achieve the end desired. 

We may criticise the Church with which we wor- 
ship, saying that it is Laodicean, that it is split up 
into cliques, that it is lacking in the spirit of adven- 
ture and of fellowship. And all this may well be 
true. But ultimately w T e ourselves — if we are in the 
Church — are ourselves bound up with the quality of 
the life of the Church; and therefore we are in- 
volved in our own criticism. For the responsibility 
for the practice and development of fellowship 
within the Church reposes in the last resort upon 
the individual members. And if, on the other hand, 
we are not in the Church, our criticism lacks pene- 
trating force, because we are upbraiding that which 



94 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

we have not patiently tried to remedy from within. 

It is good, then, that we should in loyal service to 

"" the Church deliberately accept for ourselves the 

ideal of fellowship in it; i. e., that we should accept 

\ both the joy and the discipline of a fellowship which 

J will put us into real association with men and women 

of all classes and temperaments, of all educational 

or occupational differences, of all modes of thought 

and ranges of outlook. This is not easy. We shall 

again and again find that it is necessary to fight our 

way through a natural repugnance to some quality 

which seems objectionable to us in this or that 

"brother for whom Christ died" ; just as he may 

have to overcome a similar repugnance to some quite 

different, but to him equally repellent, quality in us. 

This is, as we say, not easy, but it is an essential key 

to all catholic fellowship everywhere. 

Having accepted that ideal of fellowship, we have 
steadily to pursue it in all the spheres of the life of 
the Church; proclaiming it (if we are ministers or 
officers) in its services, and everywhere practicing it 
and helping to set the tone and create the atmosphere 
of fellowship. The obvious place of preliminary ex- 
periment is in the social sphere of the Church and 
therefore at the simply social stage of fellowship. 



Fellowship in Action 95 

But from the social stage steps may be built up to the 
spiritual stage of fellowship. The connection be- 
tween a jolly country ramble of people who have 
previously not known one another, save across fur- 
longs of pews and spiritual reality in Holy Com- 
munion, may seem remote ; yet it is really immediate 
and intimate. Those who walk or cycle together 
across the country can more easily talk and pray to- 
gether in a Study Circle or the Church Meeting ; can 
more happily sing together in choir practice or ser- 
vice, and finally come more intimately together in 
the central sacrament of the Church. If a group of 
men and women in a local Church does really dis- 
cover in fellowship something of the meaning of the 
Kingdom of God for modern life it cannot fail to 
revolutionise the whole outlook of that Church. 



II 



The next step in the expanding circles of the 
practice of fellowship is today at once the deepest 
in need and the richest in possibility — fellowship in 
co-operation with the other Christian folk in our 
neighbourhood. The revolutionary influences that 
lie here are inexhaustible. 



g6 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

The main reason why our plans for central co- 
operation are often frustrated lies in the lack of real 
united Christian life in the village and the town. All 
comity on the large scale of advance, whether at 
home or abroad, is crippled so long as the six 
Churches in the country town eye each other with 
timid suspicion or actual competitive hostility, or are 
separated by a purely pagan gulf of sheer class 
pride and prejudice. Yet when the churches in a 
town do arrive at any cooperative fellowship, the 
whole movement toward ideal aims in that place is 
quickened. Plans are formulated and carried 
through to grapple with the needs, not of the Church 
alone, but of the whole life round about them. 

The beginnings of such a practice of local co- 
operative life for the purposes of Christ's Kingdom 
often lie in the meeting in each other's homes of an 
informal interdenominational group of men and 
women for discussion and prayer, around one or 
other of the numerous and finely conceived study 
books on the different fields of missionary enter- 
prise. The great advantage of these books for this 
purpose is that they are edited by interdenomina- 
tional committees which themselves, throughout the 
preparation of each book, practice corporate prayer 



Fellowship in Action 97 

and thought. These books, conceived and written in 
such an atmosphere, give an ideal background for 
the development of interdenominational fellowship.* 
In some thousands of Churches the mission study 
group has proved itself to be a living centre of radi- 
ant fellowship. 

Unfortunately, at present literature is not avail- 
able in as adequate measure suited for the corporate 
study of social conditions at home as of foreign mis- 
sions. But here first-hand study of the actual life 
itself may be made on an interdenominational basis, 
on lines which may be outlined as follows : 

Christendom is sharply divided upon many issues. 
But in every town and city in the world concrete 
wrongs flourish which all Christian folk immediately 
recognise as evil. And there are definite, explicit 
principles accepted by all informed Christian con- 
sciences as foundations for reform. 

There is, therefore, among Christian folk in a 
town, beneath the doctrinal and ecclesiastical chasms 
that separate them, a real basis of thorough unity 



* A catalogue raisonnec of these books can be obtained 
from the United Council for Missionary Education, 8, Pater- 
noster Row, London, E.C. 4, and from the Missionary Educa- 
tion Movement, 156, Fifth Avenue, New York, U.S.A. 



98 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

both in condemnation of wrongs and in support of 
needed reform. Yet those local civic evils of slum 
or vice or corruption persist, and in only a few- 
places is any effective challenge being made to them, 
or any constructive remedy being vigorously and 
persistently presented. It is at once tragic and 
grossly sinful that a nest of courts and alleys unfit 
for the nurture of beasts, let alone of human beings ; 
a plethora of public-houses in a given area; bad con- 
ditions of labour in factories or in workshops, and 
many other anti-social and anti-Christian evils 
should persist unchallenged in any city from which 
they could be swept away by corporate action of 
Christian folk. 

The major cause for this general paralysis of the 
Church does not lie so much in the absence of a 
Christian conscience as in the fact that that con- 
science is not stimulated and mobilized. The root 
reason for this lack of stimulus and direction lies es- 
sentially in the lack of local fellowship. Continu- 
ous Christian fellowship in a city or village, on a 
corporate interdenominational basis, will bring to- 
gether the separate flickering lights of the divided 
Christian people into one powerful and effective 
flame. 



Fellozvship in Action 99 

That flame once kindled can burn, not only to de- 
stroy old evils, but to light up new paths. The very 
fact of the destruction of the evil comes from pro- 
pulsive and expulsive force of a new ideal. But the 
process once initiated not only destroys evil but 
builds good. It is constructive; it is architectural. 
A new civic conscience is created which itself sets a 
new standard for the plans of the local authorities in 
housing, in educating, in social purity, in economic 
relations, and indeed in the w T hole complex of human 
relationships. If the Christian conscience in an in- 
creasing number of cities and towns of the world 
were fired and focussed for re-shaping the life of 
those places on Christian principles, the social struc- 
ture would rapidly be transformed into some like- 
ness to that Divine City of which the ultimate plan 
is hidden in the heart of God. 

What stands between us and that desired result? 
It is, we suggest, almost entirely the lack of con- 
scious, continuous fellowship in thought and prayer 
between the Christian men and women on whose 
hearts the social civic wrongs around them are a 
haunting "concern." The men and women who are 
alive to the evils go about their life weighed down 
with a sickening sense of impotence in the fact of 



ioo Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

the crying need. They feel that alone and separate 
they are impotent. Yet if they were yoked together 
in the irresistable vigour of a living and even exu- 
berant Christian fellowship of spiritual communion 
and "mental sweat' ' ; if they continually gathered to- 
gether at once to think through the problems both of 
principle and action and to seek unitedly for the liv- 
ing power to carry the results into effect, a perman- 
ent contribution to the foundation of the City of 
God would be made. 

Nor is the ideal remote or impracticable. Local 
interdenominational fellowships are already meeting 
for evening discussion circles, or for half-day con- 
ferences, say on a Saturday or early-closing day, 
with time for social intercourse as well as prayer and 
conference. Projects that can be and in fact are be- 
ing taken in hand might be the study of the religious 
education of the home, the day school and the Sun- 
day school; the study of problems of Christian re- 
union; the opportunities of joint religious service 
and witness ; the remedies for social evils ; the nature 
of the international implications of Christianity and 
the consequent new missionary appeal and obliga- 
tions; the joint study by the Church and Labour of 
the programme of the Kingdom of God; and the re- 



Fellowship in Action iol 

lation of the Christian Gospel to business life today. 
Let us look at any one of these lines of develop- 
ment in detail. An interdenominational group may 
set itself, for example, to examine in detail the con- 
ditions of life, say, of adolescence in any given city 
— to ask in what kind of houses the children are 
born and reared and spend their life; in what fac- 
tories, shops, and offices the young folk in their teens 
work, and what are their wages, their hours of la- 
bour, and their opportunities of leisure; what 
amusements offer themselves in cinema or theatre, 
on recreation ground or in gymnasium; what 
type of citizen at once of the State and of the King- 
dom of God is thus being developed. Having diag- 
nosed the general and specific condition of "things 
as they are," the group may go on to inquire what 
increase of spiritual and moral and physical stimu- 
lus is required in order to improve those conditions 
and lift the level of conditions of life. Having se- 
cured the answers to those questions, the fellowship 
will discover that it has formulated a "black list" of 
evils to be overthrown, and developed a constructive 
programme of practical reform, which may then be 
pressed on the attention at once of the local elector- 
ate and of the town council and its administrative 



102 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

machinery, and may from newspaper, platform, and 
pulpit be proclaimed and pressed forward to fulfil- 
ment, though, we admit, probably "not without dust 
and heat." 

In such fellowship steady corporate thought and 
prayer are fundamental, but should always be re- 
lated to and followed by appropriate action. That 
action, however, should normally be rather by way 
of stimulus to local church and civic life than by un- 
dertaking permanent responsibilities or overlapping 
with or relieving the Church or the municipal 
authority of its own real responsibilities. It is much 
better for such fellowship to begin in a small way in 
the right spirit and let its leaven work outward im- 
perceptibly. Essentially it is a unifying centre for 
those who wash to take the Christian Faith seriously 
as embodying a definite programme and w r ay of life 
for man. It is a local United Council of Christian 
Witness. 

Here, for instance, is the "Basis" of a local Fel- 
lowship of Clergy, Ministers, and Laymen drawn 
together by a few men who had shared the fellow- 
ship of the larger interdenominational movements 
which we shall describe later : — 



Fellowship in Action 103 

( 1 ) That it is the will of God that we should 
bring the spirit of Christ to bear upon all the 
problems of our common life, in such a way 
that His Kingdom may come upon earth, in our 
own nation and neighbourhood. 

(2) That in this enterprise we are bound to 
unite in fellowship with all, whether within the 
Church or without, who look and strive for a 
new world refashioned according to the mind 
of Christ. 

( 3 ) That to those who are so united in a fel- 
lowship of earnest prayer and thought, who 
seek the truth with loyalty to all that they have 
already learned and with expectation of further 
revelation, the spirit of Christ will be given and 
the mind of Christ will be revealed. 

In such experiments, made locally, united Chris- 
tian fellowship may discover new grounds of effec- 
tive unity, may take vigorous and revolutionary 
Christian action, may exercise a practical witness on 
social questions, and may undertake definite and 
vital Christian reforming work. It will give pre- 



104 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

cision to those aims and a wider horizon to the local 
fellowship if some of its members can from time to 
time share in the conferences of the bigger denom- 
inational and interdenominational movements. A 
Conference of but a few hours, when carefully pre- 
pared for, can be very rich in its results, especially if 
repeated on a developing thesis. No one should 
leave the practice of such fellowship untried on the 
ground that it will take up days of time. 

Such local groups, working interdenomination- 
ally, may well desire to reach forward to a deeper, 
fuller unity and may thus be led toward a re-exam- 
ination of the things that now divide us religiously 
— sacraments, orders, episcopacy — and may explore 
the possibilities and discover the practicability or im- 
practicability of unity or federation, of common in- 
tercession, and of recognition of "orders." They 
will explore and discover in a richer way what God 
wants them to be like, and what He wants the 
Church and the world to be like. 

There will, also, be one by-product of such local 
interdenominational fellowship that will even tran- 
scend its direct products. We shall discover and 
find contact with those younger people who are now 
sickened with separation of the Churches and with 



Fellowship in Action 105 

their drab lack of the spirit of adventure, those 
younger people who have in such multitudes " folded 
their tents like the Arab" and have "silently stolen 
away" from the fellowship of the Church. They 
have done so, not so much because they are not pro- 
foundly Christian in temper, but because they have 
no convincing evidence that the Church, in a vital, 
radical, and militant sense, lives and is ready to die 
to bring the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in 
heaven. When they see Christian folk not only 
coming together in fellowship but cooperating in a 
definite and uncompromising programme of practi- 
cal reform, the best elements among them will be 
drawn into the programme and the fellowship of 
Christ. 



Ill 



We have examined some of the opportunities for 
the practice of a programme of fellowship that lie 
at our doors locally, whether simply denomination- 
ally or interdenominationally. Interlocked with 
these opportunities lie those broader issues of a na- 
tion-wide character, whether confined to one denom- 



106 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

ination or covering the more generous range of in- 
terdenominational life. 

Each man who contributes locally to the real 
spiritual life of his own Church is, it is true, 
strengthening the whole body of which he is a part. 
But something more than simply local action is re- 
quired from those who are qualified to render larger 
service. The central Councils and Conferences of 
the Church call for the sacrificial gift of time and 
service in the interest of fellowship. Our denomi- 
national Convocations and Assemblies, Confer- 
ences and Councils, and less official gatherings for 
fellowship within the denomination borders, do 
make a considerable demand on the smaller number 
of people who have the freedom and power to act 
representatively. This demand is not one that can 
be shirked without peril to the life of the Church. 
For there is constant danger that the denominational 
organisation, whether of the Church itself or of its 
missionary societies or social councils, should fall 
into the hands simply of the effective "committee- 
man" who feels that all is well if the business of the 
council or conference is put through swiftly and 
smoothly. 

The archetypal and ideal Church resolution is that 



Fellowship in Action 107 

to which we trace the whole w r orld-wide life of 
Christianity to-day — the resolution of the Church at 
Antioch to send out Barnabas and Saul on that 
journey which, in its ultimate consequences, carried 
the Christian Faith right across the Roman Empire 
and passed it on to the modern world. That reso- 
lution sprang from the steady corporate waiting 
upon God in thought and prayer of the Church until 
the Holy Spirit of God had clearly given His will 
to them. The Church at Antioch was led by the 
practice of fellowship past the hundred little busy 
actions that would have been all right in themselves, 
but petty in their results, on to the superlatively great 
and simple action of offering their noblest men to 
the work in other lands and thus lifting the Chris- 
tian Faith in action from a local cult to a world- 
religion. 

This point of the supreme importance of the prac- 
tice of fellowship in thought and prayer in the coun- 
sels of the Church as a w T hole is emphasised and 
reiterated because of the profound conviction that 
its absence is the source of much of our relative 
weakness to-day. Our annual Convocations and 
Assemblies suffer from the fact that they are called 
upon to review rapidly and to pass swiftly a multi- 



io8 Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

tude of resolutions on the machinery of the Church ; 
and in the clatter and rush of the whirling machin- 
ery the voice of God is frequently drowned, and in 
the dust of our activity the vision of His will for 
the world through our Church is often dimmed and 
lost. 

We can set no limit to the good that would come 
upon the world if those central conferences would — 
at whatever cost — delegate the myriad important 
yet relatively little things that lie under their gen- 
eral authority, and seek in fellowship passionately 
and with vigorous thought to know the will of God 
on the ultimate and tremendous issues of the world- 
kingdom of God. 



IV 



Still farther, beyond the limits even of the de- 
nominational life as a whole, lies the wide sphere 
of general interdenominational fellowship. Here 
the horizons become ultimate, for in such inter- 
denominational fellowship — especially when con- 
ceived as the World Conference at Edinburgh was, 
and as the World Student Christian Movement is, 



Fellowship in Action 109 

on an inter-racial scale — it is possible to begin to 
see the vision of the whole plan for the world and 
to formulate it in a coherent programme to which 
all the separate bodies can relate their activity and 
their progress. 

In all such interdenominational fellowship we 
may grasp more fully and in their widest aspects 
the full implications of the Christian Faith for the 
whole world of to-day. We can in the comradeship 
of many minds of varied outlook and specialised 
knowledge penetrate farther into the recesses of the 
mind of Christ for the individual, the civic, the so- 
cial, the commercial, the national and the inter- 
racial life of our day. 

We can there (and afterwards in the smaller de- 
nominational and interdenominational circles of our 
more immediate environment) in prayer and thought 
corporately seek with determined adventure to dis- 
cover the will of God for us in our generation and 
to learn what are the demands and the gifts of the 
discipleship of Jesus Christ. In such a common 
quest those great truths that have become the tra- 
ditional lumber of conventional religion or the dis- 
carded impedimenta of a shallow criticism break 
into new and living meaning. Together we are 



no Fellowship in Thought and Prayer 

filled with a common courage to experiment on the 
necessary new way of life. Without that new 
"way/' which is the old way, we shall never discover 
the City of God, yet we can never address ourselves 
alone to search for it. In the wide fellowship of 
various minds we can survey the needs of the world 
at home and abroad, and search out the meaning of 
Christ's will for the life of the races of man. In 
spiritual communion with men of other branches of 
the Christian Church we can appropriate the 
strength of their experience and share their wor- 
ship, and can in practice here and now anticipate the 
rich fellowship that will in due time come to a re- 
united Christendom in an achieved world-wide 
Kingdom of God. 

Yet the world waits in bewilderment and turmoil, 
vainly looking for the leadership that can only come 
from a Church that lives in "the unity of the Spirit." 

The fellowship of Christendom is broken. There 
is no Table Round. The seamless garment is rent. 
The voice of the Church is silent when it should 
proclaim one clear, authoritative call, and divided 
and feeble when it should declare one strong, au- 
thentic word to direct humanity up the steep paths 
that climb from the morasses that threaten to engulf 



Fellowship in Action in 

man up to the shining security of the plateaux of 
Peace. 

The challenge is absolute ; the call is ultimate and 
inescapable. If the world is to be saved, if Christ's 
glory is to fill the earth, the broken fellowship must 
be united; the seamless mystic garment must be 
woven afresh. That sacred mystery which is the 
Church must, fitly framed together, grow unto a 
holy temple in the Lord; "an habitation of God 
through the Spirit." 

"I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech 
you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith 
ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with 
long suffering, forbearing one another in love; en- 
deavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the 
bond of peace. 

"There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are 
called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who 
is above all, and through all, and in you all. 

* * * J|C 

"Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of 
the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ." 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



